The Kougu Identity
by Manic 8-Ball
Summary: A Bourne adaptation. A traumatic event leaves Naruto in the hands of ROOT, where he is trained as a ruthless assassin. On one mission everything goes wrong and he is left with amnesia. His quest to remember may become Konoha's, and the world's, salvation.
1. Cracks

**A/N: Okay, so I know I really have no business starting yet another story when I am so far behind on my other major story, but this one kind of took on a life of its own. I was watching The Bourne Ultimatum a few months ago and suddenly it popped into my head that I could see a parallel character in Naruto for almost every role in the Bourne series. There are definitely a lot of original elements here and I plan on making this more of a Naruto story than a simple conversion of the Bourne series, so please let me know what you think, and give it a chance. I promise, this thing has a life of its own, so if you think you can predict it all, I guarantee you'll be surprised.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. Go bother someone who does own something.**

* * *

Blood was on his hands, and was quickly soaking into his clothes.

He took what little he knew about treating wounds and put it to use by putting direct pressure on the bleeding cuts and stab wounds that were leaking life's blood so quickly it seemed to flow out in great rivers. He quickly realized that there was a problem, however—he did not have enough hands or even feet to cover all of the wounds, and the ones that he had covered were still bleeding. Out of desperation three Shadow Clones popped into existence and started to cover some of the other wounds with their hands and feet. The blood continued to flow.

He glanced around him desperately, looking for someone who would help him. Finding no one, he tossed his head back and screamed, "HELP!"

Tears sprang up in Naruto's eyes as he looked back at the broken body. As his concentration wavered one of his Shadow Clones dispersed. He stared only at his hands, futilely trying to stem the flow. The red dress she wore only darkened with the increasing amount of fluid it was soaking up. As suddenly as the tears sprang up they evaporated as his eyes started to turn red and a glowing cloud of youki started to form around him. Immediately his remaining two clones clutched their guts and dispersed. A small gasp was heard from below him and it seemed to freeze his instantaneous transformation.

He finally allowed himself to look up to her face, the only thing that still seemed normal except for how pale she was. "N-naruto…please…d-don't. You w-would n-never forgive yours-self," she spoke in shuddering breaths.

Naruto closed his eyes and the tears came back. When he opened them he saw Sakura through his blurred vision. She was dying.

"Sakura-chan, tell me how to fix you—I know I can do it, just tell me how…" he trailed off as she took his hands in hers and moved them over her heart.

"I-it's okay Naruto…it's t-too late now, not even I c-could fix m-me," she stuttered out as her breath came in shuddering gasps. "I n-need to tell you s-something…b-before I go…"

Naruto started to get angry again. "Don't talk like that Sakura-chan! I've never given up in my life and I'm not going to give up now! I can get you to help, just tell me how to move you—"

Sakura cut him off by squeezing his hands. "B-baka Naruto…p-please just l-listen to m-me. Y-you've always b-been there for m-me. Even when I d-didn't want you…I was t-terrible and m-mean to you for s-so long…"

Tears started to fall from Naruto's eyes. "It's okay Sakura-chan, I know you didn't mean it. Even those times when you hit me."

Sakura continued, "I d-don't know when, b-but after you c-came back I r-realized that I d-did like you, b-but I was scared and I d-didn't know what t-to d-do..." Sakura's breath came shallower but she pressed on, determined to finish. "N-naruto…I l-love you, and I'm s-sorry we c-couldn't keep our p-promises and bring Sasuke b-back for eachother…"

At the mention of HIS name Naruto stiffened and glanced over his shoulder where the Snake's apprentice stood in apathetic patience, watching his two teammates. Naruto spared him only a glance to make sure he was not attacking before returning his gaze to Sakura.

Her eyes were closed, but she was still breathing—barely. When she re-opened her eyes he whispered, "I love you too Sakura-chan."

She whispered, "I know…" and she reached up and pulled his head down towards hers, bringing their lips together for the first and last time.

As they kissed, her breath gave out in one last bloody cough, and she was still.

Naruto shuddered in sobs as he held her body against his chest, completely soaking the remainder of his clothing in her blood. Then he let out a primal scream.

"SAAAAAAAAAAKURAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

When he finished there was no sound but his breathing. Until Sasuke spoke.

"Hn. I knew she was weak. It is good that I did not bring her with me all those years ago."

Naruto turned blood red eyes on his former teammate. "Teme…all that time ago, you said you wanted to break the bond between us. Now it's done."

In an instant Naruto had sprouted a tail and disappeared. He re-appeared in front of Sasuke so closely that they could have embraced, but instead Naruto had driven a Rasengan through the right side of Sasuke's chest. As Sasuke started to double over from the impact, Naruto spoke. "You once put a hole in the right side of my chest. I just returned the favor. A few moments ago you put another hole in the left side of my chest and you killed my heart. I'll be back to do the same to you someday soon, teme. It's a promise, and I never go back on my word." As he spoke the last word he yanked his arm out of the hole he had driven through Sasuke's body and left him huddled on his hands and knees to activate his cursed seal and regenerate.

Naruto picked up Sakura's broken body, and left.


	2. Fractures

**A/N: Okay, so that first chapter...is short. Apologies to those of you who are big Sakura fans (I didn't used to be, but the older more bad Sakura is pretty cool) but that's only the beginning. It's going to stay pretty dark for a while here, but please stick with it--I am a huge fan of happy endings, so just remember: there is purpose in the pain. This one is where the story really starts to get going. I've got a few chapters already done so I'll be posting those at intervals and hopefully I'll settle into a regular update schedule in the next week or two. Thanks for reading.**

**Disclaimer: Yeah, don't own it. Bye now.**

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Naruto sat alone in his apartment

Naruto sat alone in his apartment, dressed in his black funeral clothes. It was raining, as it always seemed to be on days when memorial services were held. If Naruto had thought about it, it might have been symbolic of the dousing of someone's will of fire. But the only thing on Naruto's mind was that he had failed again. He had failed Sandaime-jiisan, despite the fact that everyone told him there was nothing anyone could have done. He had failed Sasuke, though now he was not entirely certain he had ever wanted to be saved. He had failed Gaara, even though Chiyo-baasan had been able to revive him at the expense of her own life. And now he had failed the one person that he had always counted the most precious to him, even if she never felt the same way. But she had! And that made it all the more painful.

He was considering his promise to Sasuke, that he would come back to remove his heart soon and contemplating how he might go about doing that. It had been a miracle that he had managed to hit him as well as he had in that moment, and probably only because the teme was so arrogant to believe that Naruto was incapable of attacking him at that moment. He would not make that mistake again.

When a stealthy presence landed inside his open window Naruto barely reacted. If it was a friend, he didn't want to talk. If it was an enemy, he wasn't sure he had the will to fight back at that moment. Either way, there was no point in moving.

"Uzumaki," the falsely light voice intoned. Naruto did not even blink.

"Danzo-taichou has an offer for you. He knows you seek power to destroy the Uchiha, and he knows the secret to unlocking the Kyuubi's true power."

In Naruto's fogged mind, the words registered, but he didn't care enough to respond.

"Danzo-taichou can give you the power you desire to protect Konoha, and your…precious people."

Naruto knew, intellectually, that these were probably lies. He knew of Danzo and his plans, his bitterness over not becoming Hokage, and of his secret organization, ROOT. He knew all of that, but some part of him was reaching out for some way to become stronger, for power to do what he had now failed to do four times.

So he asked, "How?"

Naruto, could almost hear the smile in the masked figure's voice. "Come, and see."

So he did.

lll TKI lll

She knew at once that he was not at the memorial when she did not see him at the front of all the mourners with Tsunade-sama and Shizune-san. She knew that if he was there he would want to be within sight of Sakura's picture. But he wasn't.

She felt bad for leaving. Sakura had been a classmate and a friend in more recent times. She had always been jealous that Sakura had held Naruto's heart, but she had never been bitter. Naruto's heart was his to give, and he had given it to Sakura whether she wanted it or not. In the end her concern for the living won out over her grief for the dead and she went looking for him.

Hinata jumped across rooftops toward the most likely place for Naruto to be—his apartment. He only went for ramen when he was happy or when he needed consoling and a friendly face, but everyone was at the memorial, and he would most definitely not be happy now, so he would not be at Ichiraku's. That left really only one choice, since not many places allowed him to stay in peace for long.

As she leapt she considered her own troubles. Her sixteenth birthday was fast approaching and so was the time for her official declaration as heiress, or her removal from the main family. The clan council was pressuring hard for her to fight Hanabi again to either secure her place as the heiress or to prove that she was too weak to even be in the main family. She had spoken to her father about her unwillingness to fight her imouto, but to no avail. He was a man ruled by tradition, and tradition dictated that the main family could have no more than one heir or heiress. If Hinata did not want to secure her place as the heiress and force Hanabi into the branch family, then Hinata would instead receive the Caged-bird seal and join the branch family.

Hinata was beside herself. She did not want to join the branch family and more than likely be forced to marry one of her cousins, but neither could she suffer her sister to endure that same fate. More than ever Hinata wished that she had not been born a Hyuuga, and despaired in the fact that she really was not meant to be the clan head, as a "true" Hyuuga would never allow such sentimentality to cloud their judgment.

Though lost in her thoughts, she did catch the flash of movement as someone slipped into Naruto's open window. She wondered at who it could be, and wasn't able to even read a chakra signature. Immediately she went on guard and reduced her own chakra signature to avoid detection. She only got close enough to hear the last part of the exchange.

"How?" Naruto asked.

"Come, and see," the unseen visitor answered. Hinata just managed to get away from the window before they bounded off away from the village.

Without a second thought Hinata followed them discreetly, and at a distance.

lll TKI lll

Naruto was aware of a familiar presence following them as soon as they left his apartment. After making his decision to go with the ROOT member he switched his brain to mission mode and went on the alert. If he got into trouble there would be nothing he could do if he was still sulking, after all. And then how would he protect the few of his precious people that remained?

The presence following them was so small that most people wouldn't have noticed it—it certainly wasn't chakra that he noticed. It was the aura, one that he had only learned to recognize since he returned from training with Jiraya, but that he knew had been close by him since he was a child.

'Hinata…' he thought. 'She doesn't need to be involved in this. She probably was worried about me and came to look for me. If I don't do something I might lose another one of my precious people today…'

He cleared his throat. "Um, can you wait here for a sec? I think I left my stove on…"

The figure ahead did not slow down. "Having second thoughts, Uzumaki? Or are you worried about the girl following us?" Naruto silently cursed to himself. "Have no fear Uzumaki. She will be dealt with in time."

'That's what I'm afraid of,' he thought. Thinking as quickly as he could he suddenly remembered that Hinata had the Byakugan and might be able to catch some hand signals if she was using it.

'Boy I hope Ero-sennin didn't just make these up…' he thought as he started to signal to Hinata that he was okay and that she should go back. He felt her hesitate and fall back a bit, but then she sped up again and got back into her original position. 'Nuts…'

At any rate it appeared that they were approaching their destination: a large tree out beyond the training grounds. His guide slowed down and suddenly dropped through the canopy of trees and neatly into a hole at the base of the tree. Naruto did the same and was surprised and upset when the opening closed off immediately after he passed through. Now there was no telling what would happen to Hinata. He hoped that he wouldn't lose another precious person so soon—he might not be able to handle it.

lll TKI lll

Hinata had activated her Byakugan as soon as she started following them, suppressing it's chakra usage as much as possible without turning it off completely. She noticed Naruto attempt to speak to the person leading him, but could not tell whether or not he received a response.

Suddenly Naruto was using hand signs behind his back as if he was signaling her. She gasped as she understood what he was saying.

Stay back. Don't get hurt/killed. My choice.

He was…concerned for her? She slowed down as she considered the words in his message. Obviously he realized that there was danger for both him and her, but he was going to it willingly? He didn't want her to get involved. If she had had more time to dwell on it she might have flushed at the thought of his concern for her, but she was more worried about keeping Naruto safe at that moment, and so decided to continue following him against his wishes.

Soon enough they were in the forest leaping over the canopy, when suddenly the guide and Naruto dropped down through the leaves and out of sight. She was able to locate where they dropped through, but by the time she made it through to the ground they were nowhere to be found.

She very suddenly found herself not alone and saw through her Byakugan that she was surrounded by what looked like five ANBU, but not quite. They wore different color cloaks, and their masks were painted, but not with any sort of animal likenesses she could place.

One spoke as she put up her guard. She too had heard of the mysterious ROOT organization and determined that these must be members of that faction.

"You have no business here," the voice spoke lightly. "But since you are here, Danzo-sama can certainly find a use for you."

They moved simultaneously and quickly—Hinata did not even have time to start her divination before they injected her with something and she lost conciousness.

lll TKI lll

Naruto followed his guide (or more accurately he followed the swishing sound of his robes) through several hallways and finally to an open chamber that looked nothing like the inside of a tree. It seemed as if several buildings had been built in the ground underneath the tree, and he and his guide were walking on one of the streets between these buildings.

At the center of the complex (Naruto wasn't really sure what else to call it) stood a man covered almost completely in bandages and with one arm in a sling, and the other resting on a cane. He seemed to squint as he looked towards Naruto, who suddenly realized he was alone with this man, his guide having disappeared in the second or two he was distracted by this man's appearance.

The bandaged man was the first to speak. "Welcome, Uzumaki Naruto. I was not sure if you would come."

Naruto gritted his teeth. "Well don't get too used to me being around, I might leave at any time."

Danzo chuckled. "Yes, you might indeed. But you are here now, aren't you?"

Naruto started to growl. "Cut the crap, Danzo. I know who you are and what you want. I was there when you tried to sell Konoha out to Orochimaru. Why would you want to help me protect my precious people? And how would you help me?"

Danzo schooled his features. "My reasons are none of your concern, Uzumaki. All you need know is that it will serve my purposes if you had the power to do as you wish and protect your 'precious people,'" he seemed to scoff at the term. "I will help you by showing you how to properly channel the Kyuubi's power without losing control."

Naruto chuckled. "Now I know you're lying. Jiraya already tried to show me how, and I nearly killed him. There is no way to truly control a demon's power, only contain it. And at this point I'm only barely doing that."

Angrily, Danzo made his counterpoint, "You speak nonsense Uzumaki. All power can be controlled, you just need the correct tools. You have trouble containing the Kyuubi's power now because it has grown as you have, and rather than channeling it you try to hold it back because of what that fool Jiraya taught you. Doing so will surely kill you, and probably many of your precious people in the process." This seemed to grab Naruto's attention. "The only way to keep yourself from losing control of Kyuubi's power when you use it, is to channel it without emotion. Tell me, how is it that you usually bring out the Kyuubi's power?"

Naruto thought briefly before answering. "I either have to be really angry, or my life has to be in extreme danger."

Danzo nodded. "Exactly. If we eliminate the emotional response and train the anger out of you, all that is necessary is to train your mind to be in a constant state of life or death awareness. That every moment may be your last. Do you think you would be willing to do this? To undertake this training for your 'precious people,' the few that you have left?"

Naruto considered. "What do you want in return? I will not become your slave, I won't be indebted to you. What is your price for this, what do you get out of it?"

Danzo merely shook his head. "You will not be forced into any kind of servitude, Uzumaki. I have told you before that it will serve my purposes for you to have the power to protect what you want. That is all."

Naruto thought some more before he spoke. "What do I have to do?"

Danzo's lips turned upwards into a mirthless grin as he turned and walked out while Naruto was escorted in a different direction out of the great chamber. Danzo had another visitor to speak with.

lll TKI lll

Hinata woke in a dimly lit room. She was not restrained, but she was having trouble molding chakra. There did not seem to be any kind of door in any of the walls of the room, nevertheless one opened and a figure she had only heard rumors about strode into the room. He looked frail and injured, but at the same time very dangerous. Even if she had been able to mold chakra she would not have attacked him.

He stood before her and seemed to look past her. She stared back resolutely, not wanting to show fear to this man.

"Do you know who I am?" the man spoke in a strong voice.

"You are Danzo, the leader of ROOT, and the failed Hokage candidate—" she was cut off when he stamped his cane into the ground forcefully, producing a piercing knock in the small room.

"It appears that you do know of me," he spoke in the same strong voice, though it seemed a bit colder than before. "Why have you come here? Why did you follow the Uzumaki and my operative to our complex?"

She spoke without hesitation, "Naruto-kun is my friend, and I was concerned about him. I was worried when he wasn't at the memorial, so I went to find him and saw him being taken out of the village. This village has already lost too many of it's ninja to the outside of its walls. I wanted to make sure Naruto-kun was safe, and to help him if he needed it."

Danzo stared at her while he considered her answer. "You care for the Uzumaki, don't you?" Hinata nodded surely. "Are you not afraid of him? Of the power he holds? Do you not hate him for what he is? For what he might do?"

Hinata stood resolute before Danzo. His questions offended her by implying that she somehow thought less of Naruto for simply existing. Hinata had discovered the Kyuubi residing in her friend long before he had revealed it to his friends, and the discovery had only strengthened her respect for the person she admired most. "Naruto is only to be feared by his enemies. He uses his power only to help those in need and protect his precious people—even me, who deserves it least of all. I could never hate Naruto for being the strong and kind hearted person that he is, and he would never do anything that would give people cause to hate him—he is not evil." Her last word seemed to be directed straight at Danzo, who was more than a little surprised at the girl's vehement defense of the boy. He had not expected such a response from the reportedly timid, shy, and weak heiress-apparent of the Hyuuga clan. Perhaps he could use that…

"You are Hyuuga Hinata, correct?" She nodded. "Soon you will be removed from the main family and forced into the branch family by the placing of the Caged-bird seal on your forehead, correct?" The nod took a second longer this time, but it came. "I may be able to help you, and you may be able to help your 'Naruto-kun,'" he said in an oily voice.

"Tell me, how much do you care for the Uzumaki? Would you die for him?"

lll TKI lll

Naruto had been taken to a chamber that was well lit and had chairs and a table. It was a very sterile room. His guides had said nothing, only directed him into the room and locked the door behind him. Since there was no one else there he took a seat and waited, trying not to fidget.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed but eventually another door opened and Danzo came in, along with two others. One was dressed entirely in black, not unlike Naruto, with hands and feet bound, and had a cloth bag covering their head. The other was yet another of the faceless ROOT operatives, who simply sat the bound figure in a corner and left, locking the door as they left.

Naruto gestured at the apparent prisoner, "Who is that?"

Danzo spared a glance at the figure in the corner and replied, "No one of importance. Simply your first obstacle to overcome."

Naruto threw a disbelieving glance at Danzo and started to get up. "I know almost everything you say is a lie, but if you're not even willing to lie to me, it's time to leave." He was out of his chair and had turned away from Danzo when the man spoke.

"That person is a traitor to Konoha. That is all you need to know," Danzo stated evenly.

Naruto turned towards Danzo and frowned. "What's your definition of a traitor? What exactly did that person do? And why shouldn't the Hokage handle this? Traitors should go to Ibiki for interrogation." He looked at the prisoner, wondering if they could hear all that was being said.

"This person has committed crimes against Konoha that are too vile for a mere prison sentence. Our interrogators have already exhausted the information to be had out of this person. Now it is time for execution," Danzo explained. He hoped that the Uzumaki wasn't as thick as was sometimes reported. Having to explain further might endanger the training.

"So you want me to kill them," Naruto stated the implied command. He looked up at Danzo. "Sorry, I don't do murder," and he turned to walk out again.

"And if you leave, Uzumaki? What then? Someone else will do the job, and they may not be as merciful as you might be. And what of the training I promised you? If you can not complete this simple task I will not continue your training."

Naruto wheeled angrily on Danzo, "You told me you didn't want anything from me! That just training me would suit your needs! I knew you were lying, but this can't even be called a half-truth if you wanted me to murder someone in cold blood all along!"

Danzo shook his head. "No, Uzumaki. You misunderstand—this IS the training. There is your half truth." He looked with his one eye as realization dawned on the boy and his face went slack. 'Trap sprung,' Danzo thought, 'and now to turn the screws.'

"At any rate I can not let you leave here alive without fulfilling your training. Who will protect your precious people then?"

Naruto's chin fell against his chest as he realized what he had gotten himself into. And now there was no way out. He sat numbly in the chair that he had just vacated and set his forehead on the table.

"There is only one way, Uzumaki. You must join ROOT to gain the power you need. If you do not your precious people will all die," Danzo said in an emotionless monotone.

"ROOT can give you the power you desire. Take this ninjato and end this traitor's life, and then we can begin the next step." Danzo slid a short, straight-bladed sword across the table toward him. Naruto looked at it but did not touch it.

For many hours Danzo sat patiently on the other side of the table, saying the same things over and over again. Telling Naruto that his precious people would die, that only ROOT could train him to use the Kyuubi's power correctly, that he had to commit by executing the prisoner. He kept asking, "Will you join ROOT, Uzumaki?"

Naruto's thoughts were a jumble. He thought of Tsunade baa-sama; of his friends, Lee, Kiba, Chouji, Shikamaru, Gaara, Hinata, Neji, Shino, Tenten, and Ino; his teachers, Iruka, Kakashi, Jiraya, and Yamato. All of his precious people's lives hung in the balance. Pretty soon his thought's were overtaken by images of his precious people being cut down because he wasn't there, because he wasn't fast enough, or strong enough. Each one cut into his already low confidence, and every so often he would see Sakura's pale, bloody face, already dead. Would he let such a thing happen to the others? Could he stand such a thing?

"I can't," he would say every so often, sometimes confusing Danzo by answering when his only question hadn't been asked.

All at once the images and thoughts of his dead friends became to much for him. He snatched the ninjato off of the table and leapt toward the prisoner with the sword raised high in a downward stabbing motion. He landed and smoothly brought the point of the sword down through the prisoner's neck, severing the spinal cord and cutting through the trachea.

The surprised prisoner barely had time to take in a surprised gasp before slumping forward, gravity pulling the body down over the blade of the sword until it hung in the air, dripping blood from the tip.

"Well done, Uzumaki. Now you know what it means to serve Konoha without question," Danzo spoke in his even tone.

The door opened and the ROOT operative came back into the room, picking up the body and leaning it back against the wall. Without flourish the bag was removed from the prisoner's head.

Time slowed for Naruto as he watched dark indigo tresses fall out from under the black sack, and then a soft, feminine chin was revealed, pale cheeks that had flushed dark red nearly every time he saw them, and finally a pair of frightened, pale lavender eyes that now saw nothing.

Naruto's mind shattered as he realized that he had just driven a blade through Hinata's neck and killed her—exactly the thing he had feared would happen to her if he had not followed Danzo's order. He fell to his knees and tried to weep, but found that he could not—the pain was too intense.

"Hinata…chan," he whispered as he collapsed in dry sobs, shaking his head and chanting to himself, "No, no, no, no…not again…not you too…no, no, no…"

He continued like that for many minutes, until finally his mind granted him relief and he lost consciousness, slumping to the floor bonelessly.


	3. Broken

**A/N: Okay, so I couldn't stand it anymore and didn't want to be mean for longer than necessary, so here's the next chapter. I've gotten a few reviews with some mixed comments...some like what's happening, some think it's a good story but are disappointed in some of the things that have happened...I would like to say right now that I am happy that some of you have noticed my story and I thank you all for your comments--please to not be afraid to critique me. I am my own beta-reader (not always the best technique, I know) so some things are bound to slip by me; please let me know if you catch them so I can fix them. This chapter starts to reveal a little more about what's really going on, but it's still a transition chapter. For those of you who know the Bourne series please be patient--we'll be getting to the fun parts after the next chapter. All others, please just keep reading--things will start looking up (sort of) soon. I hope you all enjoy this installment and that you'll tell your friends to check it out as well--my posting habits tends to match the interest in the story (hint hint).**

**Disclaimer: No change. Go away.**

* * *

Danzo watched on in satisfaction as Naruto collapsed and finally lost consciousness

Danzo watched on in satisfaction as Naruto collapsed and finally lost consciousness. 'His mind is now fractured beyond repair, and it will not take much more to break him completely.' A sniffle from the doorway drew his attention, and he saw the 'dead' girl looking down at the Uzumaki.

"I should not have done this," Hinata said weakly as she moved towards the unconscious boy's form. "What have I done?" She looked to Danzo, "Why did you make me do this?"

Danzo regarded her calmly. "It is for his good Hyuuga-san. Breaking him down will allow him to find the true power within him. He must remove his emotional attachments that endanger him and his friends if he is to protect them with all of his might. If you had not done this, it would have really been you under that black mask and not some unknown, lost soul." He punctuated this statement by releasing the henge that had been placed on the prisoner, revealing a sickly looking young woman from some far country, as evidenced by her clothing.

"If you had not done this, who then would keep watch on him and protect him?" Danzo asked.

Hinata merely nodded. She understood perfectly why she had agreed to be a part of Danzo's 'conditioning' of Naruto-kun. She had been trapped, and since the only way out was through, it really was all for his good and his training. And if she were being perfectly honest with herself she had also been morbidly curious about how affected Naruto would be if she had died—would it be as much as Sakura's death had affected him?

Hinata was beside herself with regret and indecision. She never wanted to see the emptiness in Naruto-kun's eyes and face that she just had—but she had had no other choice. Danzo had both of them trapped, and the best she could do was to try to stay by Naruto's side, even if he couldn't know. She recalled her conversation with Danzo…

"_Tell me, how much do you care for the Uzumaki? Would you die for him?"_

"_Without hesitation," she answered, "He is my most precious person, and I would do anything to help him, even if it meant giving my life for him."_

_Danzo nodded and was silent for a few moments before speaking again. "As I said, I may be able to help you. From what I understand, you have refused to fight your younger sister in the traditional battle to determine who the title of heiress shall pass to, correct?" He looked to Hinata, who nodded, before continuing. "You do not want to be the heiress, do you?" Hinata shook her head. "But you also do not want to be a member of the branch family, correct?" Hinata nodded. "Well then, it seems the only way out for you is to join ROOT, Hyuuga-san."_

_Hinata hesitated before speaking, "Father would never allow it—the Byakugan must be protected from our enemies. I will have to join the branch family, even if I did join ROOT, which I have no intention of doing." Hinata set her jaw firmly to show she was resolute._

_Danzo chuckled without humor. "Hiashi is short-sighted and narrow-minded. ROOT has much more important secrets to protect than his precious bloodline. I'm sure that the Immolation Seal will be sufficient to accomplish both purposes. Have you heard of it, Hyuuga-san?" Hinata shook her had, so he continued. "The Immolation Seal is tattooed onto every ROOT operative and is powered by their life force. If the life force ever gives out, as only happens in death, the seal is activated and consumes the body of the operative, leaving nothing behind. The flames are stolen from one of the Uchiha clan's ultimate attacks—Amaterasu—and consume their target until there is nothing left. Your father will not be able to object to such a method, you would not be placed under the Caged-bird seal and sent to the branch family, and you would not have to fight your sister."_

_Hinata trembled at the thought of such a seal being place on her, but it seemed as thought Danzo was correct, and that it would solve her problems—no branch family, no fighting Hanabi-imouto. Gathering her courage, she asked the question she was most afraid to ask._

"_What do you want of me, in exchange for this escape? Why would I want to be a ROOT operative?"_

_Danzo smiled, and it filled her with dread. "It would be your duty to be the Uzumaki's handler. To deliver missions to him and to watch over him. And also to assist in his training and indoctrination. In this way you will be able to stay with your most precious person and keep watch over him, to make sure he stays safe."_

"_How?" she had asked._

After that he had explained to Hinata about the need to break Naruto-kun's mind down to a primal level; to remove his emotional attachments. And then he had taken her to a room where she could see Naruto sitting in the next room by himself. A girl dressed in black clothing, like Hinata's, had been brought in, clearly frightened. Danzo told Hinata that the girl was a spy from Kumo and directed her to place an illusion on the Kumo girl to make her look like a mirror image of herself.

Hinata had complied, with the greatest of reservations and fears, knowing what was about to happen but unwilling to admit it to herself until she saw the broken look on Naruto's face when he thought he had killed his friend, his precious person, Hinata.

Eventually the sorrow and regret became too much for Hinata as well, and she sobbed and collapsed onto the floor next to Naruto.

lll TKI lll

When Hinata next woke she found herself in a darkened room. Activating her Byakugan she found herself still dressed in her funeral clothes, but soon discovered another set of clothes hanging on one of the walls. It looked like the same type of outfit she had seen all of the other ROOT operatives wearing. Suddenly feeling vulnerable in her simple clothes, she reached for the armored garb in front of her and quickly changed into it, finding a ninjato in its sheath underneath the clothing. She had never handled a sword before, but decided that in the absence of her usual tools it would have to do.

Seeing no apparent door, even with her Byakugan, she moved back to the futon she had woken on, and slipped back into sleep.

When she woke up she had no concept of how long she had been out, but knew immediately that it was a sound outside her room that had woken her. As she strained to hear it she realized that it was the sound of someone moaning and mumbling. She strained harder to hear it.

"…Sakura-chan…" A sniffle. A sob. "…Hinata-chan…sorry…so sorry…"

'Naruto-kun…what have I done to you?' Hinata thought as tears welled up in her eyes. She was about to activate her Byakugan to see if he was close enough for her to see him, but was startled by the sound of a door scraping open in her room.

It was Danzo. She sat up as he approached her and she could see he had something in his hand. As he got closer to her she stood and took a defensive stance, causing him to halt.

"There is no need to be defensive, Hyuuga-san. You are one of my operatives now, no harm will come to you from me—I do not waste resources." A audible sob was heard through one of the walls. "Ah, I see the Uzumaki is awake as well. I will visit him next. For you, Hyuuga-san, I bring your mask and your mission," Danzo held out the mask for her to take.

Hinata quirked her head as she studied the proffered mask. Finally deciding it to be harmless she grasped it and took it from the old man. Upon flipping it over she discovered that there were no markings on it like other ANBU and ROOT masks she had seen. 'Am I supposed to paint my own?' she wondered, immediately thinking it a childish endeavor.

Danzo supplied her answer for her. "There will be no markings on your mask. As of now you belong to ROOT, and you are no longer Hyuuga Hinata—you have no name except for the code name given to you by me. Your permanent code name will be 'Rei.'"

Hinata considered her mask. "Rei—an actor, a command, a companion, a ghost."

Danzo quirked a lip. "Exactly," he said in his strong voice, "You will be all of those things to Uzumaki. You will relay my commands to him, you will accompany him wherever his missions take him. And most importantly you will be a ghost—a reminder to him of his lost emotions, a constant source of pain to remind him that his attachments are pain and he doesn't need them. To do this you will need to put on an act—you can not treat him as you once did. He will no longer be the person you admired, only another operative that you are assigned to."

Hinata slumped, knowing that she had taken this path because it was the least of the evils presented to her. All she could do now was make the best of it. "Hai, taichou. I will do as you command."

Danzo nodded once and left the room, and Hinata alone in it.

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When Naruto woke he instantly tried to shake off the nightmare that he had had. It was difficult to do, however, because he could not find comfort in the familiar surroundings of his room.

'Since when do I sleep on a futon anyway?' he wondered. After his eyes adjusted and he was able to look around he realized that he was not in his room. He found that he was now dressed in what he recognized as the ROOT uniform, similar to the one ANBU wore. Next to the futon he had woken on he saw a ninjato, in its sheath. It all came back to him like a horrible flood, the cold feeling starting in his gut and working its way up to his head.

He angrily kicked the ninjato to the far side of the room before succumbing to the memories of the murder and falling over onto the floor.

He knew he was talking aloud and crying uncontrollably, but he could not stop himself no matter how hard he tried. 'Will I never be able to protect the people that I love? Will I always hurt everyone around me?'

He briefly considered reaching for the ninjato and using it to end his life before he could fail any more of his precious people, but reconsidered when he realized the Kyuubi would heal him long before he died, if only to be a sadistic bastard. 'Stupid fox…' he thought angrily at his navel.

Some time passed and he continued to sob, but eventually a door scraped open somewhere in the room and a figure entered. Naruto didn't move to see who it was, but the visitor did not keep him waiting long.

"Uzumaki," Danzo said loudly, "You have little enough time to feel sorry for yourself. Your training will begin shortly. Remember, either you will live, and become strong to protect Konoha, or you will die and Konoha will perish."

Naruto didn't move. "What about my precious people?" he mumbled. "Are you going to have me kill any more of them to become strong and protect Konoha?"

Danzo stayed silent for a moment. "Only if they become a danger to Konoha. Unless you start to put away your emotional attachments, they will be classified as such, and then they will die. Either by your hand, or another operative's. Do you understand?"

Naruto mumbled unintelligibly, but Danzo could see he head move in a nodding motion. "Good. Here is your mask then. With it comes a new name—you will no longer be Uzumaki Naruto. You will be Kougu Ninku. Your permanent mission is the defense of Konoha. You will be assigned a partner, Rei, who will bring you mission details. You will operate outside of Konoha and mostly outside of the Land of Fire, against our foreign enemies that are too dangerous for the Hokage to risk attacking openly. Do you understand?"

Naruto, now Ninku, remained unresponsive, but Danzo knew that even if he didn't understand, he soon would. The training would make sure of that.

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_One year later…_

Ninku stood on the wooden pier staring out at the setting sun. If he were to take the time he might have appreciated it's beauty, but for him the setting sun only meant the close of another day and the onset of night, when most of his work was done.

Staring out at the sea west of the Country of Water, he ran a hand through his long white hair. Since all of his assignments were outside of Konoha, he had little occasion to wear the mask Danzo had given him so long ago. His whisker marks he kept hidden through careful routine, his hair he dyed regularly, and he used a minor henge to change the color of his eyes to a dark green. He kept his appearance different enough that even on the rare occasions he did visit Konoha he would not have been recognized if he were allowed to be seen by non-ROOT citizens of Konoha.

As the sun continued to set a boat came into view, directly out of the sun it seemed. In it sat a lone figure, operating the boat. As it passed by the pier, Ninku leapt out and landed in the boat, taking a seat ahead of the driver.

"Rei," he said, without emotion.

"Ninku," the figure said in return.

Ninku stared ahead along the boat's course for a bit. "What information do you have, Rei? What is my target?"

Rei continued to steer the boat toward a small inlet well away from the town with the piers. Once they had gone as far up the inlet as they could they tied off the boat and moved ashore to a secluded spot with good visibility in all directions. Rei cast a privacy jutsu and then retrieved a large envelope from within her pack.

Ninku took it and read through its contents. "Another capture, interrogate, and eliminate, eh Rei?"

Rei bowed her head and spoke a single word. "Hai."

After finishing reading the mission details Ninku sealed the packet into a scroll and sealed the scroll with a blood seal. By the time he was finished Rei had released the privacy jutsu and donned her pack once again. Ninku regarded her critically.

"You had better change and get into your henge—you can't go into town looking like that. It just screams assassin."

Rei merely stood and walked a short distance away before replying, "Hai, Ninku."

While Rei changed Ninku turned away. He had been told when he and Rei had first been introduced that for their own safety they should never know the other's true identity. Over time that became less of a concern with Ninku, since he shut most of his prior life away, deeming it too troublesome and painful to carry with him. Rei on the other hand, did not have a new identity to hide behind, so Ninku was never allowed to see her true appearance outside of the standard ROOT uniform and mask. The only feature of hers that he got to experience directly was her voice, and he was sure that even that was a minor transformation—it sounded too much like Hinata not to be.

Even though he had shut his previous life away he still had the memories. And he was convinced Danzo was using those memories to ensure his obedience—not that he needed to worry. Ninku had no reason to stop obeying Danzo—it would simply not be worth the effort and pain.

Every time Rei spoke though, Ninku experienced a small stab of guilt, pain, and regret. Rei was such a good actor that sometimes he even heard the same emotions in her voice—doubtless it was another technique to keep him in check. Occasionally his thoughts would wander to Rei and wonder if she was anything like the girl who had died so long ago, but before he could travel too far down that road he would reel himself back. Such thoughts only brought pain and agony.

Rei indicated by slight sound that she was done changing and had applied her henge, so Ninku stood and once again regarded her critically. Her henge was that of a teenage brunette, with brown eyes and thin features, slightly shorter than him. Her clothes were acceptable for local fashions. He nodded his approval and took her hand to lead her back to the village where he would wait for his opportunity to strike.

lll TKI lll

After checking into a decent inn, they got into bed fully clothed while Ninku waited for moonset, sometime after midnight. The only break from protocol occurred when they turned to one another and held each other.

During their early missions together they realized how totally alone the other was and in an effort to comfort the other found comfort for themselves. Ninku especially needed the safety he found while Rei cradled his head to her chest. There was nothing romantic about it, nothing sexual, simply mutual comfort between two lonely people who had nowhere else to turn. Often during these times they would allow themselves a small show of emotion and they would cry together. It was a silent weeping that they shared, evidenced only by their tears, but they both knew they needed it. One shed tears for friends who were lost and out of reach; the other for a friend who was close enough to touch, but out of reach just the same.

This night was no different from the others, until Ninku spoke, startling Rei out of her silent tears. "Rei, I need to ask you something…"

Rei calmly replied, as her training had taught her, "You may."

Ninku swallowed, feeling fear for the first time since completing his training nine months ago. "Rei…why does your voice sound like Hinata-chan? Does Danzo-taichou make you do it?"

Rei's breath caught in her throat for several moments—she had not heard that name in nearly a year, and she had feared that Ninku had forgotten it altogether. She took a moment to calm herself down before answering—doing so inappropriately could give Danzo cause to activate both of their Immolation Seals.

Ninku broke the silence again. "If you can't tell me, I understand…I should not have asked."

Taking a deep breath, Rei answered him. "It is my own voice Ninku-san, I do not change it. I do not know of this 'Hinata-chan,' but perhaps you are imagining it. I very much doubt that my voice is so similar to someone else's."

Ninku was silent for many long moments. "Sometimes, when I get tired I call you Hinata-chan in my head, because you remind me of her. You are quiet and gentle, like she was. She was my friend and I miss her." Rei soothed him by brushing his hair back with her hand. His breathing slowed and he was quiet for so long that she thought he might have fallen asleep, until he spoke again.

"Rei…it is very inappropriate of me to ask, but…may I kiss you?"

Rei's hand stopped moving through Ninku's hair, and she stiffened, barely breathing. She was frightened of his question, of what her answer might be, and of what the consequences of such a thing could be. She had worked very hard to become Ninku's partner, so that she could watch over him and be by his side. She knew that because of their situation it would be dangerous for both of them if Ninku ever discovered the truth about what happened so long ago on the day he joined ROOT. As much as she might have once loved Ninku, his life was now her responsibility, and she couldn't risk that for her own selfishness. Her own life she cared nothing for, not after the sins she had committed that day.

"Never mind Rei, I should not have asked such a thing. I am sorry…I should go now." Ninku got up and started to gather his equipment. He was nearly finished before she spoke.

"Yes," she barely breathed, but Ninku heard her just the same.

"What?" he asked, startled.

She took a breath, and then another. "You may kiss me Ninku-san. Once. But I ask you a favor—I too have a friend that I miss terribly. If, when we kiss, I may think of my dear lost friend, will you think of your Hinata-chan? I can not replace her, but perhaps I can receive your kiss for her."

Ninku was shocked at her answer—even more than he had been that he had asked such a thing of her. This was his partner, someone whose true face he had never seen. The only connection they felt beyond their partnership was the silent comfort they shared in the privacy of a hotel room. Ninku was unsure what to think now, especially because of her request that he remember Hinata-chan when they kissed. It frightened him.

'What right do I have? I don't even know if Hinata liked me like that, and even if she did I was the one who—" Pain suddenly split his skull and he grabbed his head and fell to the floor. His defense mechanisms had been tripped, blocking some painful memory he had been on the urge of unlocking.

Without a sound Rei came over to him and soothed him once again, brushing his hair back. When it passed she helped Ninku to his feet and guided him to the edge of the bed and sat down next to him.

For a long moment they both sat there, looking down at the floor. Finally Rei spoke, "Forget it Ninku-san. We have gone too far on this dangerous subject. We should both forget about this…" She trailed off when her chin was gently pulled up and towards Ninku. Tears glittered in his eyes as he closed them and moved his face closer to hers.

Rei's eyes gathered tears as well, mourning that this was not the way she had once imagined it. Nevertheless she had offered, so she closed her eyes and closed the distance between her and Ninku. Their lips met briefly in a soft, sorrowful exchange. There was no heat in the kiss, only the sadness of loss—one for something that might have been, and one for a friend who existed now only in memory. They broke apart after a few moments, unable to bear their grief any longer.

Ninku stood and moved to the window and opened it. "Thank you," he whispered before he leapt out into the dark night.

"I love you still," Rei whispered to the empty room. Only the wind answered her.


	4. A Clean Slate

**A/N: Okay, so here's the next chapter, and this should be the end of most of the background for this story, I think. I don't want to give a whole lot away, so look for a longer note at the bottom. Oh, my sorta-beta-reader suggested that I put some translation notes in so that people unfamiliar with some of the Japanese words I use can read this without going, "Huh?" So here you go:**

_**henge - **_**transformation  
**_**dobe - **_**loser/dead-last  
**_**teme - **_**bastard  
**_**kougu - **_**tool/implement/farm tool  
**_**ninku - **_**endurance/stoicism**  
_**rei - **_**1. soul/spirit/departed soul/ghost; 2. companion; 3. actor; 4. command/order/dictation;**  
_**taichou - **_**boss/commanding officer**  
_**senbon - **_**thrown acupuncture needles (used by Haku)**  
_**ninjato -**_ **short straight-bladed sword used by ninja**  
_**katana - **_**longer curve-bladed sword used mostly by samurai (and in a few cases in Naruto, ninja as well)  
**

**Feel free to PM me if there are any others you may be confused about--I sometimes forget that not everybody reads the manga or watches the subs, but if you only watched the dubs on CN, you're probably a little lost in this story...sorry!**

**Disclaimer: Do I look like I own any of this? Seriously?**

* * *

Ninku leapt soundlessly from rooftop to rooftop, moving towards his target. His face was blank, but his mind was in turmoil.

'I should not have done that with Rei.'

'_But you liked it anyway—better than your last kiss anyway.'_

'That's not fair! How could I possibly have enjoyed kissing Sakura while she died! That's never what I wanted!'

'_Yet you didn't think of Sakura while you were kissing Rei, did you?'_

'That's different, Sakura died fighting. Hinata…' Ninku staved off a wave of pain, '…Hinata never had a chance.'

'_Yes she did. She could have turned back when you told her too.'_

'She could have, but I know she'd been trying to change—Neji told me so. Sometimes it seemed like she was trying to change into me, and I definitely wouldn't have turned around.'

'_How did she not have a chance then? It seems that as far as you can recall it was out of your hands once she decided to keep following you.'_

'…I don't know. It hurts when I try to remember how she died. All I know is that it was my fault…again.'

'_What about Rei, then? You haven't done her any harm. And you enjoyed kissing her at least a little bit.'_

'It's not right. I can't even call her a precious person, she's just another ROOT operative. The only thing I can say that I know about her is that she's lonely too.' Ninku suppressed a frown. 'And besides that, I can't afford any more emotional attachments. Danzo at least taught me that. Maybe I'll ask for a new handler the next time I go to Konoha.'

His subconscious seemed to have nothing to say to that, so he turned his mind to the mission at hand. Sailing over another darkened rooftop he approached the edge of the city near the docks, where his target, a spymaster from another major village (it didn't matter which), was having a meeting with some unknown nuke-nins.

'Maybe I'll get lucky and have to take out the nuke-nins as well. It's been far too long since I had a good fight, and I could really use the release.'

He stopped three buildings short of his destination and hunkered down to watch. He had scouted the location before they had checked in at the hotel, so he knew that he had the best vantage point from the exact spot he was sitting in. Unfortunately, his target had already been at the location, otherwise he might have just set some layered traps and destroyed the whole building after the target was killed.

Ninku wasn't sure how much time had passed when he finally saw movement within the house. Two cloaked figures were approaching from the street and a door opened towards them in anticipation of their arrival. Ninku narrowed his eyes at what he could only assume were the two nuke-nin his target was meeting with. He could not discern any of their features from the distance he was at, but something about the way they moved seemed familiar to him.

One seemed to walk with a slight bounce in his step, as though he were not a wanted man and had no cares in the world, and one could almost see the carefree grin on his face. Experienced eyes, though, could see that in every bounce was the potential for a quick movement, a change in direction, a toss of a weapon.

The other seemed to move only with necessity, as though great mental effort was put into moving his body—not because of a disability, but simply because he preferred to not move unless it was absolutely necessary. Such a thing could be called laziness, but again, through experienced eyes Ninku saw no laziness, only conservation and deception. The second figure gave nothing away in his slow gait.

They entered the house and Ninku decided it would be safe to move closer. Careful not to expend any chakra, for that would alert his target that a ninja was moving about nearby, he carefully dropped to the alley below him and quietly approached the building. Once he was within sight of the bottom floor windows he could hear snatches of a conversation.

There were two voices: one light and falsely kind—probably belonging to the first of the visitors—and one careful and nervous. The second was sure to be his target. As he crept closer to the entry point he had chosen on the first level, a third voice was heard through the cracked windows, but it was nothing more than a grunt. There was a long lull in the conversation, during which Ninku kept absolutely still since the noise of their conversation would no longer cover his soft foot steps.

When the voices started up again Ninku heard the kind-sounding one's voice say, "You should be careful Nagoro-san. My partner does not enjoy people who lie." And Ninku froze.

He recognized that voice.

It was the voice of the traitor—Yakushi Kabuto. Despite the fact that Danzo had once tried to deliver ANBU dossiers to Orochimaru through Sai and Kabuto, Ninku still considered the medic nin a threat to Konoha, regardless of how Danzo classified him.

Ninku mentally added Kabuto's body to the checklist for this mission. His companion might also qualify, but for now that was not a concern. Their voices picked up again as the conversation—it actually sounded more like a negotiation—continued. Ninku drew closer to his point of entry and slowly withdrew some senbon from a pouch under each wrist. They were poisoned, naturally. His skill at throwing senbon was nowhere close to matching that of Haku, the ice user who was almost the first person to die by his hand, but the poison made up for his lack.

Ninku tensed to leap through the window when suddenly all talking ceased.

"He's here," the third voice intoned with something that sounded like anticipation. Ninku knew that voice without a thread of doubt.

And all hell broke loose.

In an instant Ninku's disguise was obliterated and his eyes changed from green to red as the henge dropped. A red aura surrounded him and his whisker marks became visible and pronounced through the make-up so carefully applied to hide them. The white dye burned out of his hair by the concentrated energy he now exuded, exposing his bright blond hair. His nails and teeth grew to sharp points and a fierce guttural sound issued from his throat. He smashed through the window, senbon forgotten on the alley floor outside, and he savagely tore the spymaster's throat out without even bothering to see who he might have been or where he had been from.

His objective accomplished, he turned to the two bonuses—Kabuto…

…and Sasuke.

lll TKI lll

Rei sat up suddenly from her dazed state, realizing instantly that something was wrong. Ninku hadn't called on that power since he had finished his training. She knew that he was either in trouble or his anger had gotten the better of him.

Ninku liked to pretend that Danzo had killed all of the emotion in him, but all he had taught him to do was hide it—their shared tears from earlier were proof of that. Rei was actually extremely relieved that Ninku still felt sadness and anger, at the very least. Any others he still felt he kept well hidden, but Rei believed enough in him to know that he held on to them regardless of the terrible training Danzo had submitted him to.

The guilt she had felt after doing her part in the initial conditioning of Naruto only increased in the following months, watching ROOT try to bend Naruto into their image. Her guilt though, was always somewhat lessened by the defiance and anger she saw in his eyes during the training. It was clear that he hated himself enough to put himself through the punishment Danzo offered, but even if he hated himself, his true nature could not be subdued, could not be killed—just like Naruto.

It was ironic that Danzo had renamed Naruto 'Ninku,' since that endurance was exactly his defining characteristic. He endured through all the harshness and dehumanization Danzo could dish out, and even though he had learned how to hide it, the Naruto that Hinata had loved was still there.

The only times Rei was truly afraid for him was when he tapped the power of the Kyuubi. Danzo had been right—without the turmoil of emotion Ninku had been able to channel the Kyuubi's power with much more control—he even managed to maintain a mostly human form through the release of the fifth tail. She had only seen it once, but the sheer amount of power had been paralyzing. It wasn't until the sixth tail had sprouted that she had been spurred into action—it had caused him terrible pain, and she could not bear it.

According to the reports Danzo had acquired, in past occurrences Naruto had not been able to maintain full control past one tail. By training his emotional response he had brought that up to the fifth tail. Once the sixth tail sprouted however, he went feral and the red chakra started to burn him terribly. Rei had been on hand to see it, and it was immediately after seeing the fifth tail for the first time. Though she had been paralyzed, Ninku's pain had driven her to action. It had cost her a week in the infirmary for the burns, and another week in confinement for breaking protocol, but she had been able to get close enough to Ninku in that state to embrace him, to calm him down, and to tell him she loved him.

Of course he could not remember that, when he lost control he could never remember what happened after it was all over. But it was a step forward for her, especially when she had been falling for so long, lost in the mire that she and Naruto had been sucked into.

Feeling yet another spike of the terrifying aura that had awoken her in the first place, Rei grabbed her equipment and jumped out into the night—her friend needed her.

lll TKI lll

Ninku regarded his two quarries with cold, indifferent eyes as a third tail formed behind him, silhouetting him in a ghastly crimson light. Kabuto seemed outwardly unconcerned, but backed away just the same, remembering the last time he had seen three tails of the Kyuubi, on the Heaven and Earth Bridge. Ninku made a feint in his direction at the same time the fourth tail started to form and was satisfied to see the medic nin jump backwards just a bit. He turned his attention to Sasuke.

He was smirking.

Ninku's eyes remained cold and focused on his prey. "Far too long ago a boy named Uzumaki Naruto promised you that he would take your heart, as you had done to him," he ground out in an ominous sub-tonal voice that was obviously not completely human.

Sasuke seemed to quirk an eyebrow at the use of third person voice, wondering for the first time if somehow this was not the dobe talking—the Naruto he had known would not speak so calmly and intelligibly, and he most certainly would have blindly attacked in the first thirty seconds of the battle, which were now long past.

Kabuto, for his part, was busy counting the number of tails swaying gently behind the boy in front of him. He was certain that the last time there had been four tails loosed from the Kyuubi vessel that he had been transformed into a chakra construct of Kyuubi's true form. And yet, here stood the vessel before him, still in human form, and still speaking. He tensed and edged backwards ever so slightly.

Ninku remained still as yet another tail formed behind him. "Today is the day that boy's promise is kept." Then, to Sasuke's extreme annoyance, Ninku disappeared.

And Kabuto exploded from the inside out.

Such a grisly occurance would normally have little effect on the sole survivor of the Uchiha massacre, and yet something about it made him sweat more than a little. He had been foolish the last time he saw the dobe, and allowed him to make a move without countering. He had promised himself that he would be on guard the next time and that the dobe's threat was as empty as his promise to bring him back to the village was, all those years ago.

Now he was concerned, though. Kabuto was by no means an easy opponent, particularly because he was a medic nin and could heal himself from almost any injury. Except being completely blown apart, which Naruto, or whoever this was, seemed to have taken into account.

The bloody mist cleared quickly from the force of the attack and Sasuke immediately brought up his second level cursed seal, complete with the ghoulish wings sprouting from his back.

"_Goukakyu no jutsu!"_ he yelled as he exhaled a mighty fireball and jumped upwards and backwards, crashing through the second floor and roof. He knew it was only a bid for time, but he needed to reassess his opponent it seemed, and distance and obstacles would afford him the time to do so.

Ninku exploded out of the house as a red blur shortly after Sasuke had emerged and was already pressing the attack. Sasuke shifted direction as quickly as he could and narrowly missed a rasengan aimed at his chest.

When Kakashi had taught him the Chidori he had taken pride in the fact that he was learning one of the most powerful offensive jutsus in existence, and one created specifically for the purpose of assassination. He had belittled Naruto's rasengan as being a blunt object and as unwieldy and imprecise as its user. In the past few years since he made that statement, Naruto seemed to have addressed that issue.

Even as Naruto overshot the point in space where Sasuke had been an instant before his eyes were already tracking along his foe's current trajectory. This unnerved Sasuke somewhat—he could not remember the dobe ever being so completely focused and in control during a battle. Naruto's momentum carried him to the apex of his arc, and then he flashed out of existence again. Sasuke, not wanting to wait for him to reappear, did the same and moved quickly to another spot.

Naruto was not giving him the time he desperately needed to evaluate his tactics. He was moving too fast…Sasuke suddenly grit his teeth. Had he really been so jarred by the attack that he had forgotten to activate his Sharingan? Whatever had happened, Sasuke channeled chakra to his eyes and the world slowed to a much more manageable pace. He was still finding it difficult to anticipate the dobe's next attack, however, as a clawed hand just barely missed his chest—his HEART—and slashed through the building behind it as he leapt away just in time.

Sasuke knew he was at a disadvantage because he had given the initiative to Naruto from the very beginning. It was time to take it back. Removing his sword, he held it in a loose grip. He channeled chakra through it, strengthening it and charging it with elemental lightning chakra. He turned to face the oncoming attack in mid-air and smoothly intercepted Naruto's attack with the point of his katana.

It forced Naruto to shift and abort his attack, but otherwise did not slow him down. The maneuver was intended to impale an oncoming opponent over the tip of the blade, but Naruto, even with his great speed, had simply batted it away and engaged it with a small ninjato that looked like ANBU issue to Sasuke. They parried each-other's blades for a moment before springing backwards onto opposing rooftops, the burning home of the spymaster between them.

Sasuke smirked. "This seems familiar, doesn't it Naruto? Facing off with a gulf between us, just like the abyss that separates us as friends." Sasuke was playing his trump card, counting on Naruto's foolish sentimentality to blind him, as usual. Even with the death of Sakura, Naruto couldn't have changed that much, he was sure.

The glowing form across from him moved not an inch from where he stood as he spoke. "Uzumaki Naruto is dead. He has become compost and a new man has taken seed and spread roots in his place. I am Kougu Ninku, and you are the last remnant of Uzumaki's pathetic and sad life. I will kill you for both our sakes."

Once again Sasuke was confused by the use of the third person when Naruto spoke, and it sounded like he had taken a new name for himself as well—'The enduring tool?' Sasuke would have laughed if he cared enough to still do such things. It was oddly appropriate, he supposed. Deciding it was irrelevant, he attacked, charging a Chidori as he moved.

Naruto, or Ninku, or whatever he called himself, also moved to the attack, charging a rasengan in one hand and holding his ninjato back below his hip in the other. Sasuke imagined it must have been a near repeat of the scene from their fight at the Valley of the End, until a thin brunette girl suddenly appeared in the way, driving a glowing fist into Sasuke's abdomen before he could react. Pain immediately lanced through his stomach and he doubled over, narrowly avoiding the swirling mass of chakra in Ninku's outstretched hand, but unable to dodge the blade of his ninjato as it sheared one of his wings and part of the flesh on his back off.

Sasuke swung half heartedly at the fleeing brunette, trying to remember where he'd seen that kind of attack before, but his Chidori fizzled out and he barely salvaged enough momentum to make it to the rooftop he had jumped toward. He turned towards Ninku, who had already landed and was staring at him icily.

Sasuke scowled back, putting a hand to his bleeding side—his LEFT side (Sasuke was starting to see a pattern in Ninku's attacks and they appeared to be stubbornly aimed towards his heart—a disconcerting realization). The staring contest continued as Sasuke started to ponder the few options that were apparently left to him.

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Ninku glared at the Uchiha without humor, sentiment, or even anger. Just with cold determination that he would be dead before this fight was over. In his haze of Kyuubi chakra he was hyper-focused, completely centered on his intent to remove the teme's heart from his chest, using whatever tools he had in his arsenal. Even in his state of mind, though, his heart still skipped a beat when Rei appeared in from of him and struck that blow to Sasuke with the Chidori no more that a foot from her head. He couldn't afford distractions. So far he had been able to keep the initiative, but the fight was quickly growing frustrating and long for Ninku. He had been taught that fights that lasted longer had a tendency to break down and waste energy and blood. Ninku knew it was important to try and end the battle quickly, especially since the destruction of the target house had surely already been noticed and people would be coming to investigate.

He briefly searched for Rei and found her, waiting for another opportunity behind a building out of the peripheral vision of the teme. He signaled Rei to stay put, but had no way of confirming her receipt of the signal. The teme moved suddenly, but he had apparently made a bunshin and it took Ninku a moment to discern which was the real body. Rei, it seemed, had not needed that moment.

She attacked the Uchiha while he was in mid-leap and dealt a powerful blow to the base of his spine. He had started to turn, sword still in hand, and even though the blow had incapacitated him, the combination of his momentum and his rotation brought his katana around in an upward swipe across Rei's back, eliciting a sharp cry from her as she lost her form mid-leap, and started to plummet to the ground.

Reacting on instinct alone Ninku aborted his motion towards the teme—who was also plummeting, apparently unconscious—and intercepted Rei's falling body. He caught her gingerly and moved across the few rooftops that separated them from the piers he had stood upon earlier. Rei lay in his arms as a dead weight, barely registering in the back of Ninku's mind that she must either be unconscious or dead. He quickly moved her towards an uninhabited section of the docks and lay her in a boat tied up towards the end of one of the piers.

He lay her down and turned her over to inspect the wound, his chakra tails starting to dissipate as his concentration shifted from battle to rescue mode. To his great relief he found that the slash had not cut through her spinal cord, though it had cut deeply through the tough sinewy muscles of her upper back. He removed a field dressing from one of his hip pouches and, ignoring propriety, tore the loose cloth top from Rei's back and dressed her wound as best he could, using a minor medical jutsu to burn off any septic residue that may have already gathered in the bleeding wound. He packed it with absorbent bandages and then wrapped her torso tightly in the field wrapping. His work finished, he rolled her unconscious form over to inspect the rest of her.

And noticed for the first time that her henge had fallen when she lost consciousness.

He stared dumbly at the face of a girl he had thought dead for over a year. 'Hinata-chan was alive? All this time?' he wondered incredulously. 'How could this be?'

His thoughts raced far beyond his normal capacity to keep up with. The first thoughts that came to mind were to wonder how she had survived, and whether she even remembered who she was, or who he was. Then he thought of Danzo and his devious nature, and how it would be just like him to manipulate a situation like this, to blackmail both of them into working with one another, each thinking the other dead, or lost. As his brain started to catch up with the implications of that thought, his anger started to grow.

Danzo had caused him to murder, and to believe that he had killed Hinata-chan, someone precious to him.

Red chakra, that had almost completely dissipated, started to boil in the air around him, adding it's own light to the growing red glow of the fire burning behind him in the city.

Danzo had somehow forced Hinata-chan into ROOT, and knowing his own experiences in ROOT operative training, had also subjected her to horrendous and unimaginable training during her indoctrination.

A tail grew to full form, and another started to take shape.

Given that Hinata had never revealed herself to Ninku—no, Naruto; he would no longer abide the fake name he had accepted for so long—she had either been coerced into not revealing herself, or she had lost her memory, by Danzo's training, or Naruto's blade had somehow not killed her, but caused her enough trauma to affect her brain.

A third tail finished its complete formation. The fourth started to grow from amorphous chakra into its distinct form.

Naruto, suddenly filled with self-loathing, realized that he had been seeking comfort in the arms of the very girl he felt so much guilt over killing. If Hinata did remember everything, she had offered him consolation, even though he was the one who had caused her pain to begin with.

The fifth tail completely formed.

His mind slowly replayed the scene from only moments ago, watching Sasuke slash his blade across Rei's back, and hearing her cry of pain above all the other sound of battle. He quickly shrugged off his jacket and gently put it on over Hinata's bandaged torso, and set her leaning forward in the boat so she would not be laying on her wounds.

The sixth tail started to form, and as the chakra started to burn the outer layers of his skin off he heard a voice, from long ago. A memory trapped in his mind, and unlocked by the power of the sixth tail starting to form. The voice was Hinata's, and it said, tearfully, but full of determination, "I love you Naruto-kun…I won't leave you…"

The sixth tail suddenly became distinct among the other five. Naruto turned and moved back towards the burning buildings behind him with such force that he destroyed the pier underneath his feet, setting Hinata in her boat to float slowly westward on the rolling waves.

Naruto reached the spot where Sasuke had fallen to see a large white snake slowly swallowing Sasuke's body. The teme seemed just barely conscious and turned his head toward the fearsome form of the Kyuubi-Naruto. He smirked just as his head entered the snake's mouth, which then poofed out of existence, no doubt taking Sasuke somewhere far out of reach.

In a completely inhuman roar Naruto's chakra enveloped him completely and his awareness faded into blackness.

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Feeling a great pain behind his eyes, a young man blinked into the harsh light of midday. He sat up uncertainly, feeling light headed and dizzy.

After taking a few minutes to regain equilibrium he stood up and looked around him—and saw nothing but burned sand and patches of glass for nearly a mile in every direction around him.

'What the…what happened here?' he wondered sleepily. 'Did something explode? And if it did, how am I still standing here?'

He looked down at himself, noting his sandals, dark pants and black muscle shirt, dusting himself off of sand. Spotting a glassy portion of the ground, he moved towards it and peered into its reflection. He studied his reflection, seeing bright blond hair falling in long spikes down to his shoulders, fierce blue eyes, a strong featured, but smooth and not unkind face, broad shoulders and a well muscled chest and torso.

"Who am I?"

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**A/N: Okay, so now it should be somewhat apparent that the beginning of the story is over and the big deal fun part is about to begin, maybe with a little interlude in the next chapter. Be ready though--life is never boring for an amnesiac, since they don't remember anything everything is a new experience! Please remember to review and tell your friends--I'm glad that so many people seem to be looking at the story and that some of you have already added it to your favorites, but the more the merrier, right? See you soon, chapter 5 is cookin'.  
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	5. Drifting

**A/N: Okay, so here's the interlude I was talking about. I wish there was more action in this chapter, but sometimes you just need to lay foundations. Look for some familiar faces in this chapter and a little bit of that happy ending I keep talking about--but it's going to be a long road to get there, believe me. I'm hoping to keep updating once a week on this. I just started at the US Army Engineer School and apparently we're on a six day work week here, so I don't know if I can keep the schedule I want, but I'll try. Thanks to all for your reviews, it lets me know you care. I've noticed quite a few of you throwing this on your story alert, but I guess you're withholding judgment until further development. You can ask questions too though--I'm more that happy to respond to reviews. Anyway, 'nuff said.**

**Disclaimer: Blah blah, you know the drill. Don't sue me, I didn't come up with this on my own.**

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Tetsuo slurped warm tea from his thermal mug as he walked down the pier through the pre-dawn mist from the sea. It had been nearly five years since he had returned to his calling in life as a fisherman. Even though Gatou had kept himself in the western part of the country, his influence had been felt even on the far eastern coast of the Country of Waves.

Tetsuo himself had been pressed into indentured service when the deed to his land and his boat had been bought by Gatou's corporation and the interest rates had been raised to ridiculous levels. It was only after that group of Konoha ninja had come and helped the bridge builder—Takuna, or Tabuza, or something—that the country had returned to normal and he had been able to return from the hard life of a crewman on one of Gatou's freight ships. He had only heard bits of the whole story, and who knew what was actually true in that story (would the Copy-Nin Kakashi really have been assigned to protect a bridge builder from some small country?), but it was obvious that the one named Naruto had been a deciding factor in the battle. The bridge that had revitalized the entire country was named after him after all.

The middle-aged man often thought of the strange events in his country and how they had affected even his simple life on mornings like this. He sipped his tea and inspected his boat with his eldest son, loading all of the necessary supplies and equipment for a day of fishing. Looking over, his son—a young man he was very proud of—gave an affirmative nod and a smile to indicate the boat was in as good shape as ever, he moved into the boat and started to untie the mooring lines that tied them to the pier.

Setting his mug on his seat he pushed the boat off from the small pier and looked through the mist back towards his house, small but comfortable, to see the shape of his wife watching them leave, and waving. He smiled and waved back. It was good to have a quiet life with his wife, his son, and his boat. Yes, if he ever chanced to meet that Naruto guy, he'd definitely buy him a drink or two for giving this back to him.

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Rei slipped in and out of consciousness, never long enough to register anything more than a slight swaying and rocking, and a fierce burning pain in her back. Once or twice she felt nauseated and vomited, only realizing afterwards that she must not be on her back, since she didn't choke.

Once, she opened her eyes and turned her head to look around. She realized that she must be in a boat, and that she must be moving along a current, since she could feel a slight forward motion. Her energy fully spent from that small movement, she slumped forward again, and was unconscious once again, not reawakening for many hours.

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"Tou-san!" his son's voice suddenly cried out.

Tetsuo turned towards his son, expecting to have to help him with one of the lines, or maybe a net, but instead finding his son pointing off the starboard side at something in the distance.

"My eyes are not nearly so good as they used to be, boy. What is it, what do you see?" he asked in his quiet way.

His son squinted, trying to make sure of what he was seeing. "It's a boat, Tou-san. A really small one, like for lakes, or rowing up and down the shore between piers."

"Hn," the elder man intoned. "It could not be out here on purpose. Go man the rudder, Souda-kun. Let's go see if there is anyone inside."

"Hai, Tou-san," his son called, already moving to the rear to sit down at the rudder.

Tetsuo raised the small sail on his boat, catching a bit of wind and moving them towards the derelict. Normally he would pull his lines and nets up before moving, but it was the honorable and correct thing to do to not waste time when someone may need assistance.

As they drew closer to the rowboat they could see that the back edge was splintered and charred a little bit, like something had exploded very near to it. Once they were close enough, Tetsuo extended one of his hooked poles over the side to drag the boats closer together. Without him having to say anything, his son stood and started to lash the two boats together as much as possible. Tetsuo allowed a proud smile to spread on his face as he did the same to the edges of the two boats closest to him.

"Tou-san!" his son called out again. "There's a girl in the front here, and it looks like she's hurt—she's sick, it looks like, and she's unconscious."

Tetsuo had moved to the front of the boat by the time his son was finished and was able to see for himself the young indigo-haired girl draped over the front bench of the rowboat. Indeed, she looked injured—the back of her jacket had some blood soaked through from the inside, and she looked rather pale. There was dried vomit on the bottom of the boat underneath her, but it was common for unconscious passengers in a boat to get seasick.

The girl needed help—there was no telling how long she'd been out here, but she was still alive, and at the very least needed a doctor to look at her wound. Thinking quickly, Tetsuo determined that he and Souda had caught enough fish the past few days to go in early today.

"Souda-kun, start drawing in our nets and lines. I will unlash the rowboat and move it to the stern and tie it up there so we can head back to shore." Souda began moving immediately, and Tetsuo was once again pleased with the maturity and responsibility his son showed.

Tetsuo stepped over the gunwale of his boat and into the smaller boat to begin untying the lines he and his son had just finished securing. He finished and placed the oars into their locks and rowed the boat the rear of his own, tying a mooring line from the rowboat to one of the chocks on the back of his boat for towing. He turned to the young woman laying in the bow of the rowboat, and couldn't find a better position for her to travel in, especially since her back was injured. He leaned down to roll her to the side to make sure she was not injured on her front as well, and noticed, out of hand, that the jacket did not appear to match the rest of her clothing—it was dark and many-pocketed, like a utility jacket of some kind, but her clothing was a simple tunic and skirt and cloak. As he rolled her he noticed a pair of hip pouches, which upon inspection he discovered contained assorted kunai and shuriken. 'A ninja?' he wondered. Digging a little deeper, mindful of not cutting himself on the sharp objects inside the pouch, he also discovered a hard object wrapped in black cloth. He unfolded the cloth, which turned out to be a headband attached to a metal plate that bore the symbol of the leaf.

As he stared at it the girl stirred and turned her head toward him, barely cracking her eyelids open. They stared at each other for a long moment before she reached towards the hitai-ate in his hand and her cracked lips moved. He bent closer to hear her words.

"…Naruto-kun…" she barely whispered in a scratchy, parched voice. "…please help Naruto-kun…"

Tetsuo's eyes widened as the famous name registered in his brain. He nodded and placed the hitai-ate into the girl's open hand, who fell back into unconsciousness seeing she was understood. As soon as she was out he went to help Souda finish pulling in all the nets. They needed to get back to shore quickly, and get this girl to the bridge builder—he would know how to best contact the ninja village.

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It was late enough that most of the lights in the village had been turned off, and the majority of its citizens were asleep, or soon would be. One of the few buildings with lights still burning in the windows was the saloon towards the west end of town. From the level of noise and laughter coming from within, nobody inside planned on resting for at least a few more hours. A gray-haired man with small spectacles and a goatee stumbled out the door of the saloon, leaning heavily on the dark-haired young man at his left side.

"See you tomorrow night, Tazuna!" someone called from inside the bar.

"You bet!" the obviously drunken man called back, "I'll even buy you that drink I owe you." This statement was met with laughs from within, since Tazuna never actually bought anyone a drink—everybody else was still too busy buying drinks for him. Even after nearly five years the people of his country, though he didn't really see any of them that lived outside the one major city he lived in, still felt indebted to him for the part he played in ridding the people of Gatou.

True, though Tazuna had built the famous bridge, he himself had not really done anything more than hire the ninja who eventually freed everyone in the Country of Waves (and on days when he was really honest with himself he recalled how he had lied to them and then they had decided to come and help anyway of their own free will). But since the ninja were no longer around for the people to thank directly, their gratitude spilled over onto Tazuna, who was still within reach—and he certainly had no problem with that.

The stories had occasionally gotten out of hand, but there was really no need for that—the real story was fantastic enough. That a legendary ninja and his three students—a certain loud, blond brat in particular—had not only defeated the Demon of the Mist, but also turned him against Gatou enough that the mercenary ninja had taken his own employer's life, was almost unimaginable. Add to that the courage and confidence that same blond brat had inspired in the people of the city, and it was completely ridiculous. And every time Tazuna told the story it got more and more ridiculous.

Just the same, people had long memories when it came to the story of their famous bridge, and no child in the Country of Waves since then grew up without hearing the tale of the Great Naruto Bridge.

As the old man stumbled home (sometimes forgetting that he had help), the young man under his arm rolled his eyes at the antics of his grandfather.

'The way he acts you'd think it was him who had defeated Zabuza, the Demon Brothers, Haku, killed Gatou, and finally finished the bridge,' Inari thought to himself bitterly. 'Still, he tries to give credit when he can. He can't really help it if people need to thank someone and he's the only one around. Naruto-niisan and his team haven't been back since they left all those years ago.'

With Inari struggling only a little to carry his grandfather's weight (he had grown considerably since the ordeal on the bridge) and Tazuna stumbling along and chuckling to himself drunkenly every so often, they eventually made it to the house they had lived in for most of Inari's life. He opened the door with his key and carefully maneuvered his grandfather inside towards the couch in the living room. He had just finished setting him down and covering him with a blanket when there was a sharp rap on the door.

Inari jumped but quickly moved to the door to peer through the peep hole on the door, grabbing his hanbo from next to the door as he did so—at this time of night very few people could be out with good intentions, and well liked as his family was, Inari wasn't going to take chances and get caught again.

Through the peep hole, however, Inari saw a very tired looking man and most likely the man's son. There was something long and rectangular on the ground between them, but Inari couldn't make it out as shadows were cast across it. Deciding that they did not look armed or dangerous, Inari opened the door—hanbo still in hand.

The man standing at the threshold looked up with hope in his eyes and before Inari could speak asked, "Is this the home of the bridge builder Tazuna?"

Inari wore a puzzled look on his face as he answered, "Well, yes, but he hasn't been a bridge builder in years—not since the Great Naruto Bridge was finished, anyway. Since then he's been managing the town since there aren't really any bridges that need building."

The man was confused for a moment and then responded, "That's not important; this is the home of Tazuna, who hired the Konoha ninja, correct?" The man possessed a sense of urgency, as if there was some sort of emergency, and this set Inari on alert.

"Yes, it is. What's wrong? Do you need to hire the ninja from Konoha?"

The man looked relieved. "No, not exactly, but we do need to contact them. We are from the eastern coast and this morning we found a girl in a boat. We think she is a Konoha ninja, and she seemed to know of Naruto—I guess there's only one, right? The same one that helped get the bridge finished?"

Inari nodded, quickly understanding the situation and trying to think how he could help. "As far as I know he's the only one. Please, come inside, all of you. Where is the girl you found?"

The man nodded to the rectangular shadow on the ground as he and the other boy stooped to pick it up. "We put her on this stretcher—she's been unconscious since we found her, and her back is wounded, so we didn't want to hurt her more by jostling her a whole lot." Inari made way for them to come into the house and led them towards the kitchen table, which he cleared off so they could set the stretcher down. The man continued, "The only time she's woken was this morning, and she said, 'Help Naruto-kun.'"

Inari was now extremely worried as to who could be hurt on his kitchen table. 'Could it be Sakura-neesan? What does Naruto-niisan need help with?' Forgetting that his grandfather was sleeping not far away, he moved to the light switch and flipped on all the lights, eliciting a groan from the old man on the couch.

As the lights flashed on Inari saw that it was not Sakura, but rather a pale girl with long dark indigo hair, whom he didn't recognize at all.

A grumbling Tazuna stumbled into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes and shouldering the visiting young man out of the way to get to the sink and a bottle of aspirin that was on the window sill. All eyes watched him as he downed six of the tablets from the bottle and drank an extremely large glass of water, splashing the last of it in his eyes before he turned around, surprised to find three people and a girl on a stretcher in his kitchen.

"What the heck is this? Who are you people and what are you doing in my kitchen?" he asked menacingly. Inari moved to calm him down, but before he could speak the visitor spoke.

"Tazuna-san, I presume. My name is Tetsuo, and this is my son, Souda," he gestured quickly at his son standing next to the bridge builder, who offered a short bow. "We are here because we need your help to contact the ninja of Konoha—we believe that this girl is one of theirs, and that she knows Naruto, whom you brought here those years ago."

Tazuna seemed to shake the alcohol out of his head in one quick jerk and he was suddenly lucid and alert. He moved quickly over to the girl on the table, quickly seeing the bloody spots on her jacket, and finding the black headband and hitai-ate clutched in her hand where Tetsuo had left it earlier in the day.

He straightened and walked out of the room and up the stairs at a quick pace. Inari, Tetsuo and Souda followed closely behind him. "What are you doing, ojiisan?" Inari asked quietly.

Tazuna answered him in a sure and grim voice, "When Tsunade-sama took over as Hokage she sent one of her emissaries to me to introduce the new Hokage and to offer a channel to Konoha should our country ever need their services again. She also made sure to let me know that if we should ever hire them again that we should be up front about the mission rank, or else we might get blacklisted," Tazuna admitted sheepishly.

Inari glared a little at his grandfather—sometimes he was still a little angry that he had tried to trick his friends. Then he realized what else his grandfather had said. "What do you mean 'a channel to Konoha,' ojii-san?"

Tazuna looked back at the three men following him as he reached a seldom used door. "I haven't meant to keep him secret, it was just that I didn't want everybody to go crazy hiring ninja—people die when you hire ninja to solve your problems. That was something I learned the hard way, and almost didn't get to learn at all. I wanted people to figure out how to solve their own disputes and problems, and if it was an issue that concerned the whole country, then I would call Konoha," he explained, sounding as if he was seeking reassurance or perhaps a little forgiveness. For what, Inari could not tell.

"What are you talking about jijii? Keep who secret?" Inari questioned impatiently.

Tazuna opened the door and stepped in, turning on the light as he made room for the others to crowd into the small loft room. As each man entered they took note of a desk with some blank scrolls, ink, and brushes. A flapping of wings was heard and a red hawk flew through the window and alighted on a perch set up at one end of the desk. "This is Kaen," Tazuna explained. "He's a messenger hawk to Konoha. For the most part he takes care of himself, but I check on him occasionally. He comes back as soon as he hears someone come in the room. I haven't used him yet, but I think this is worth sending him for."

With that, Tazuna sat down and hurriedly wrote out a message, using the code he'd been given the key to, and explained all that had happened, asking questions of Tetsuo and Souda as he wrote. Without prompting, Kaen stretched out his leg to allow Tazuna to attach the scroll and quickly took off into the night towards Konoha.

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Shizune wandered the halls of the Hokage tower aimlessly. Tsunade had insisted on sleeping in for the morning and then had rushed like mad to get caught up from all the time she lost sleeping, and then insisted on drinking far too much sake to relieve the stress of the day. Shizune, ever the faithful assistant, had stayed up with the Hokage to make sure she didn't pass out on any remaining paperwork, and now she couldn't sleep.

'At least when Sakura was around she could goad Tsunade-sama into a screaming match and get her riled up enough that she wouldn't just go back to sleep,' Shizune thought wistfully. After Sakura had become Tsunade's second apprentice, Shizune had come to regard her as a younger sister, and they had often confided in each other about enduring the terrors of their mutual teacher. Shizune missed her terribly, especially on nights like these.

The past year had really been a terrible mess, and it had affected the blond Hokage far more than she let on. First she had lost her apprentice. Then she had lost her son, adopted in all but actual fact since she the day she had agreed to take the mantle of Hokage, mostly so she could make sure he could follow in her footsteps. And to top it off the Hyuuga heiress, the shy and quiet Hinata, had disappeared on the same day.

Hiashi had been the first to report anything amiss—both Shizune and Tsunade had noted that Naruto was not at Sakura's memorial, but figured he just needed to grieve on his own. Hiashi, however, had seen his daughter leap away from the memorial towards the blond boy's part of town, and that was the last he saw of her. Knowing of her long-standing crush on the boy (what ninja didn't at that point?) he immediately suspected foul play and requested a mission to track both of them down, fearing they had eloped, or something of that nature.

Tsunade, of course, had been quick to reassure the Hyuuga that Naruto simply would not do such a thing, especially so close on the heals of his own crush's death. Naruto had related the entire incident to Tsunade as he stood there holding Sakura's broken body after that mission. It had brought Shizune to tears and she hadn't been able to sleep for nearly a week, just thinking of the tragedy. Poor Naruto…Poor Sakura…

In the end Tsunade had not had to look far for the two missing teens, since Danzo had come in shortly thereafter to announce that he had recruited both Naruto and Hinata and that they would be working directly under him of their own volition. Tsunade had seen through his declaration and done everything officially possible to discover the whereabouts of the two ninja, but had eventually been stonewalled by the combined forces of Danzo, Koharu, and Homora. Even Hiashi had to back down at that. Between the three of them—and for the life of her, Tsunade could not discover why the two council members kept siding with Danzo—all inquiries into the whereabouts and wellbeing of Naruto and Hinata were blocked. All they would say is that they were performing missions for the good of Konoha.

Shizune's wandering eventually led her to the aviary, where rows upon rows of hawks and other messenger birds had buried their heads under their wings to keep out the cold. Shizune liked it in the aviary because, short of the Hokage monument, it was the best view of Konoha. It was late, but the moon was still on the rise, flooding the village in light from the east.

As Shizune stared out across the village, a shadow caught her eye, and she turned east, looking into the moonlight. There, silhouetted against the three-quarters full moon, was a messenger bird, coming towards the tower. Shizune didn't have to wait long as it flew into the aviary and alighted upon one of the many perches near the decoding table. Shizune reached for the bird's leg, which it offered with no resistance, and extracted the sealed message.

She was surprised to find that scroll was not sealed as a ninja would seal a scroll, but rather it was sealed with wax. Upon closer inspection, she saw that the wax seal was that belonging to the Country of Waves. 'Tazuna-san sent a message with Kaen? That's a little strange—I hope everything is okay…and that he's being honest about the mission rank, for his sake,' Shizune thought darkly. She cracked the wax seal and looked over the contents, seeing immediately it was in code, but it happened to be in one of the standard codes that she could read without a code analyst.

As she read the message her eyes widened to impossible proportions, and she quickly rolled up the scroll and raced towards the Hokage's office.

"Tsunade-sama! Wake up, you're going to want to read this!" Shizune called as she burst through the doors, automatically ducking the sake bottle thrown by reflex.

Tsunade grumbled and pulled her green jacket up over her head, hiding from the loud noise. Shizune, emboldened by the message she carried, yanked Tsunade's shirt back down to her shoulders and shook her roughly. "Tsunade-sama, you have to wake up right now and read this message from Wave Country." When Tsunade still didn't respond, Shizune dropped the bombshell. "It's got information about Naruto."

That caught her attention. She snatched the note from Shizune's outstretched hand and quickly read through the contents, quickly drawing the same conclusions that Shizune had.

"Shizune," she barked, "Assemble Kakashi and Kurenai immediately. Go get them yourself and bring them here personally. No one else is to know of this outside of you and me. I will brief Kakashi and Kurenai when they get here. You will remove them from the mission roster and assign them an S-rank mission commissioned by me. You'll be in charge while I'm gone, and don't let anybody give you any crap—it might be a few days before I'm back."

Shizune swallowed—hard. "Tsunade-sama, you're going yourself? Wouldn't it be better if I went instead…"

"No," Tsunade said in a hard voice. "I trust you Shizune, but this is the first break we've gotten against Danzo and ROOT. I'm going myself. Go get them Shizune."

Shizune nodded and started to head out the door before she was stopped.

"Shizune."

Shizune turned expectantly to the Hokage, who was pointing at the letter still in the younger woman's hand.

"Burn that. Completely."

Shizune nodded and walked out the door, activating a minor katon jutsu as she did, completely incinerating the message. With speed she possessed, but rarely used, she disappeared into the early morning to collect Kakashi and Kurenai. It was about time something went their way, for once.


	6. Fill in the Blank

**A/N: Okay, so I think I'm a little late on this chapter than I wanted to be, but just the same here it is. I got tagged with some extra responsibilities at this school that will be cutting into my writing time, so please be patient for new chapters. This one is hot off the press with not much proofreading on it, so if you see any mistakes please let me know so I can fix them. Again, not much action in this chapter, but I can't always promise that there will be action in every chapter. This is more of a character development adventure with some action thrown in here and there anyway. Enjoy!  
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**Disclaimer: As always, I am the humble owner of nothing Naruto related.**

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The blond man sat cross legged on the dry, burnt earth under the blazing mid-day sun. In front of him were several things, all that he had discovered attached or stored on him in some way. From his waistband he had removed a sheath with a short, straight-bladed sword in it. He had also removed a pouch from his belt, which really only contained three scrolls and a handful of sharp looking needles.

Presently he regarded the needles, holding one up for close inspection. They puzzled him, since they were pointed on both ends and didn't seem to have an eye to pass thread through. Glancing at the sword, he guessed that they must be some kind of weapon, and set the one in his hand back down. He next reached for the sword, but as soon as he started to close his hand around the grip, a lancing pain shot through his skull, causing him to retract his hand.

'Okay…that was weird,' he thought. 'Apparently I'm allergic to swords or something."

He shrugged, moving instead to the scrolls laid out before him. They looked perfectly normal at first glance but the man knew as he looked at them that they were different—they seemed to be…energized, somehow. He reached forward and picked up the closest scroll and tried to unroll it, expecting it to come open easily. For some reason though, the paper seemed to be glued to itself somehow.

'Well that's useful,' he thought bitterly, frowning as he tried to slide a finger nail underneath the edge to get some grip on the paper. As he did so, the paper ran along the flesh under his fingernail, cutting him slightly. He snatched his finger back, sticking it in his mouth, dropping the scroll. He started to glare at it when he noticed that the paper had come unstuck and unrolled part way.

'What the heck?'

Wonderingly, he pulled his finger out of his mouth and picked up the scroll, further unrolling it, expecting something extremely important to be inside. What he found seemed at first like an upset, until he realized he wasn't quite sure what he was looking at. Written on the scroll was an array of symbols and some written figures that he could read, like symbols for 'storage' and 'inside.' As he held the scroll before his face and stared at it, he had a nagging feeling in his mind that he should know exactly what he was looking at. The feeling wouldn't go away, and felt like a word on the tip of his tongue, just beyond the light of realization. Deciding not to force it, he set the scroll aside, still partially unrolled and reached for another scroll.

He quickly encountered the same problem he had had with the first scroll—he couldn't open it. Growling, he set it in front of him and set his elbow on his knee, holding his chin in his hand.

'Okay, the last scroll opened after I tried to slide my nail under the paper, but I got a papercut doing that—definitely not a mortal injury, but I'm not a huge fan of them. They hurt!' Thinking of his injury, he opened his eyes and looked at his finger and found that it was no longer bleeding. 'Huh, that's funny. I could swear it was bleeding when I put it in my…' Suddenly his eyes opened wide. 'That's it! It's a blood seal!'

Excited by remembering the technique, he proceeded to bite his thumb and smear some blood on the second scroll, quickly putting his thumb into his mouth. Upon opening it he saw a nearly identical array of symbols to what was in the first scroll. The feeling of familiarity started to extend beyond that of just seeing the pattern once already in the first scroll—he knew that he had seen this many times in his life, but just couldn't remember the details. The feeling grew even stronger after he opened the third scroll (having to bite his thumb again, which he found odd) and had all three laying side by side on the ground in front of him. He stared at them for many moments, trying to let the memory come to him, to remember what he was supposed to do with the scrolls.

He suddenly jolted as a thought came to him. 'Maybe…' he thought, leaning forward over one of them, placing his hands on the writing. He waited for a moment, but nothing happened. As he started to get frustrated, he started pushing against the paper with his hands, focusing intently on them.

"Man, I feel like an idiot. Why won't this work?" he ground out in annoyance. Suddenly, a pale blue light that he could barely see in the daylight flowed out of his hands and into the paper below them, startling him into stillness. As he watched, the writing on the paper glowed brightly for a moment, before a small puff of smoke issued from the paper. When it cleared, the man was astonished to see a stack of small folders and other scrolls and papers. With a jolt of sudden realization a memory surfaced.

'A sealing scroll! That's what that was…and it unsealed because I focused my energy on it. I think I remember how these work now—maybe,' he thought hopefully. Sorting through the items now piled in front of him he found that the folders appeared to contain information on people, the scrolls were blank, and the papers seemed to have more information on people, but it wasn't the same as in the folders. They appeared to be orders, for capture or assassination. There were only three of them. Disturbed by the find, he set the papers aside and looked to the folders again.

Inside each was a small card with the person's name and picture on it, a certificate of birth, a short summary of the person's life, and traveling papers in a few of them. There were six dossiers, as he'd decided to call them, but something was bugging him about them.

'Weird,' he thought as he laid them out in front of him. 'They all seem to be close to the same age, height, and weight. The pictures are pretty similar too…almost like they're all the same person.' Leaving them on the ground he turned to the two remaining seal scrolls and picked one up and laid it out to his right side. It took a minute, but eventually he was able to unseal the second scroll, revealing within it a stack of clothing, and what looked like shampoo bottles.

'Not shampoo bottles…' he amended as he looked at two them in his hands. 'Hair dye.' Turning back to the dossiers he confirmed what he had first suspected. 'They are all the same person,' he thought, matching bottles of hair dye to each dossier. 'And what's more,' he mused, thinking back to the image he saw reflected in the glass mirror, 'They're all me.'

He finished matching the bottles to the dossiers, but was one short, and realized it was because the identity missing the hair dye used his natural hair color.

'Well that's convenient, I guess,' he decided as he picked the small folder up and slipped it into a pocket. 'Maybe this is who I really am.'

He turned back to the second pile and separated out the clothing. There was a wide variety of it—cloaks and scarves for desert environments, a wide hat for rainy climates, loose pants and jackets for mountainous terrain, and shorts and shirts for hot weather.

'Well, it certainly seems like I get around—I've got identification for six different countries, and it looks like I packed to visit all of them, too.'

Turning to the final scroll he unrolled it before him. He opened it almost effortlessly, now having a feeling for transmitting his energy into the paper. Inside he found a full set of body armor, including shin guards, arm guards, and a chest protector. There was also a mask, painted to look like a fox from what he could tell. He held it in his hands, feeling a shiver go down his spine as he grasped it. Turning it over in his hands he saw a small etching on the inside edge.

"Kougu Ninku," he read aloud. Following the edge around he found more. "Sandaime-ojiisan—third geezer?...Sasuke," his heart clenched and he felt his eyes burn slightly as he read, "Sakura…" He took a moment to wipe at his eyes before he read the last name. "Hinata," he croaked, unable to stifle the sudden crushing feeling that came over him as he read the names. He had felt something as he had read the first two, but the last two names seemed to affect him much more.

Sensing that the mask was significant, but somehow disturbing, he set it back on the pile of armor. "I wonder who they were?" he asked the empty air. Taking stock of what were apparently his possessions, his eyes passed over the loose papers again. Internally dreading their contents, he picked them up and started to read them.

'Okay…this one's dated June 14, and apparently this was in Lightning Country. That would be helpful if I knew what day it was and where I was, but somehow,' he looked up at the blue sky above him, 'I don't think I'm in Lightning Country.' He shuffled the papers and read the second one. 'Hmmm, this one was in Water Country on June 28, but again, I neither know where I am or what the date is.' He shuffled to the last paper and quickly noted that nothing on the page would provide him with more information than he already had.

Just as he was about to put the papers down though, a warm sea breeze carried a slight scent to his nostrils—he almost didn't notice it, but it had the affect of making him feel tired, and also reminded him of the feeling he got while reading the mask. He didn't quite understand how, but he was able to identify that the scent was wafting off the paper he held in his hands. He brought them closer to his nose, smelling them experimentally. Even more confused, he found that he could tell that each paper had it's own amount of the scent and that one in particular held the strongest of the three. Unsure, but feeling that there was something important about this discovery, he placed the two weaker scented papers down and held the third in front of him again.

As he concentrated on the paper, reading and re-reading it for anything that he might have missed, he began to grow frustrated again until another small piece of a memory surfaced in his brain—nothing more than something someone said to him once.

"_Think boy! If I teach you one thing during this trip it will be how to use your head for more than a battering ram…"_

With this in mind the blond looked one last time over the contents of the document, stopping as he saw that the date on this one was the most recent of the three—July 2. Suddenly getting an idea, he grabbed the two sheets he had dismissed and smelled them without looking at them.

'Heh, definitely this one smells stronger,' he thought, opening his eyes and looking at the date. As he had predicted, it was the next date back, June 28. 'Okay, well I guess that means these are pretty recent, and maybe that first one is close to where I am now.' He began to re-read the sheet he held in his hand, dated the 28th.

'This one says the next assignment would be to the North, in a coastal village. I'm definitely near the coast, so maybe I'm near to that village. I can probably get some answers there—at least to find out where I am and what day it is.'

With a destination now in mind, he started to pack his things. Sealing the items back into the scrolls was as simple as retrieving them, he discovered after a minute of experimenting. He kept the single set of documents and the three loose papers in one of his pockets, so he could look at them quickly if he needed to. Looking around, he decided the first thing he needed to do was get out of the crater and to somewhere a little higher up to see if he could maybe spot this town he thought was nearby.

It took him nearly twenty minutes to walk to the edge of the crater, and once he crested the lip he decided he didn't need to find any higher ground. Littered around the edge of the crater were fragments of buildings and a few badly damaged piers—clear signs of the town that had once existed there.

'Crap,' he thought darkly, 'Well, I guess that answers that question.' Surveying the damage more closely he could find no bodies or even anything in one piece that might give him a clue as to what had happened to create such destruction—and how he survived it. It disturbed him somewhat that he was able to look at such apparent disaster and not flinch at the thought of finding corpses or body parts, but he swept the scene with emotionless and objective eyes.

Sitting down once again, he reached for the loose paper in his pocket, holding onto it more tightly now that he was in the open air—the breeze coming off the sea was more constant than it had been in the bottom of the crater. He again read the two most recently dated assignments.

'Okay, so if I travel south along the coast until I hit this river, I can follow the river east until I get to this city. It sounds like it's a little bigger than this place was. I'll definitely be able to get some information there.'

Renewed in purpose, he once again put the papers in his pocket, brushing against the identification folder as he did so. Reminded of its presence he pulled it out and studied it once more.

"Nakamura Kyosuke," he mumbled, reading the name under the picture. "I guess this is me—or at least, one of me." He stuffed the folder back into his pocket and began to walk south along the shore, the ocean wind whipping his long blond hair as he walked.

lll TKI lll

As the sun finished sinking below the horizon behind him, Kyosuke arrived at the inlet of the large river he had been looking for to follow to the city. Looking up-river, he did not see a clear walking path along his side, however there appeared to be a road not too far beyond the far shore of the river. Looking around for other people, he experimentally placed a foot on the water's surface, and stepped out onto the running river.

Earlier in the day he had been walking along the beaches, wondering over the strange, but few, memories that had surfaced in his mind, attempting to discover something more about himself and where he came from. He didn't get much farther than the few random memories that had surfaced earlier while he was dealing with the scrolls, but it was a suitable distraction while he walked.

As he had walked, though, he had not noticed the tide coming in until a particularly large wave had splashed his legs, jarring him out of his reverie. When he looked down, he found that there was not sand under his feet, as he had thought, but rather he had been walking on the water. He blinked stupidly for a few seconds, absorbing this new information, but unable to come up with any kind of explanation until he noticed the subtle feeling of energy leaving him—if he concentrated hard enough he could even feel the subtle changes in the flow as the water below him ebbed and flowed.

It had taken some getting used to, but eventually he gathered the courage to go further out onto the relatively calm seas, losing his footing in some areas where the waves caused more turbulence than there was nearer to the shore. As he experimented (and once fell completely into the water), another stray memory came to him. It was nothing more than a feeling really. He remembered taking off his sandals and rolling up his orange pants—something them was oddly comforting, though he couldn't for the life of him think of why such ugly colored pants would be comforting—and stepping out onto water that he instantly fell into and which scalded him terribly.

Now, crossing the river, he tried to pursue that scrap of memory, hoping that he could expand it somehow, but nothing more came to him. As he reached the other side, he drew the conclusion that he had not always been able to walk on water, and that he had trained himself to do it. In any case, he decided it was a useful skill and that he probably shouldn't flaunt it.

He reached the road and did not see any traffic. He started to step out onto the road when something on his belt caught on one of the bushes lining the edge of the foliage. When he discovered it was the short sword strapped to his belt, he frowned.

'Oh yeah, I forgot I had it on me,' he thought with some trepidation. 'It probably wouldn't be a good idea to walk around armed in a big city, but the last time I tried to touch it I got that awful headache.' Suddenly getting an idea, he retrieved one of the scrolls from his hip pouch. He unrolled it on the ground and unsealed the clothing stored inside. Quickly he changed pants—out of the black utility pants he was in, and into a pair of long white board shorts.

'Ha!' he thought triumphantly. 'Take that you stupid sword—I didn't even have to touch you.' He smirked at the scroll in his hands, now one pair of pants heavier, but one pair of shorts lighter. Realizing how ridiculous he must look, smirking at the scroll, he returned it to the pouch and stepped out onto the road.

It took another hour of walking, but he arrived at the edge of the village not long after full darkness (since the moon had followed the sun in setting so closely). For some reason he was half expecting to see a large wooden gate and a guard shack next to it, but instead he just found the road widening and the trees on either side being replaced with buildings, steadily growing taller as he walked. He wandered aimlessly for several minutes, trying to follow the larger streets toward what appeared to be more lighted sections of town.

Finally he turned a corner into a business district that was teeming with people. There were restaurants and bars and even a pachinko parlor or two. Having no money, he had no interest in any of these places, but he decided that one of the bars might know a good place to stay.

He made way for a couple of tipsy gentlemen on their way out, and shouldered his way through the crowded establishment towards the bar. Many of the patrons were nursing large mugs full of some cloudy beverage he could only guess was alcoholic. There was a harpist somewhere, plucking away and providing music that the many conversations successfully reduced to background noise. When he finally arrived at the bar, he signaled for the bartender, a short but thickly built dark haired man, and was politely told it would be a while.

He turned around to study the bar while he waited. There was really nothing special about it, but it did not have a sense of familiarity. He could see nothing within the room that he recognized, and certainly none of the faces. If he had been here before, any memory of his visit was as lost as the rest of his memories. While he was dwelling on this depressing train of thought, he was tapped on the shoulder from behind.

"Whaddaya want?" the gruff man behind the counter asked as he hand dried a tall glass.

"Nothing to drink, please," Kyosuke said. The bartender let out a short huff and started to walk away, but Kyosuke reached for and grabbed his shoulder. The short man stopped and glanced back. "I was wondering if you knew of a place to stay for the night—I don't know this town."

The bartender smirked. "Yeah, sure," he said. "Lemme write it down for you." He turned to a stack of napkins behind him and started writing on one with a pen that had been stuck behind one ear. When he finished, he handed the napkin over to Kyosuke and pointed towards the door. "Once you're ouside, hang a left and go three blocks. The napkin has the details, but it's a nice place. Tell 'em Ren sent you."

"Thanks," Kyosuke said to the man, and then headed out the door and down the street. He found the hotel without much trouble, and true to the bartender's word it did seem to be a nice place, if a little small. Entering the building, he walked to the counter and rang the bell for service, seeing there was no one there.

A vibrant pink-red haired girl poked her head out of the doorway behind the counter and looked at him with a scowl that looked too comfortable to be a temporary feature. "Just a minute—I'll be right there." He nodded at her, but she seemed to stare at him for a second longer before disappearing from view.

Kyosuke blinked at the strange reaction of the girl. He could have sworn he saw recognition in her eyes. In any case, he didn't have to wait long before she breezed back through the doorway to the register. Without looking up from the book of available rooms she asked, "You want a room right?"

"Uh, yeah," he answered somewhat dumbly.

"Whatever," was her curt reply. "We've got a second floor room for 30 ryo for the night. Should I write you in, Mr…?"

"Nakamura," he supplied. "Nakamura Kyosuke. Yes please, I'll take the room."

She nodded and wrote the name in quickly. Turning to the wall behind her she grabbed the appropriate key and placed it on the desk in between them. She continued to write in the guest registry and told him without looking up, "Room 242. Up the stairs and take a right. It should be towards the end of the hallway. Checkout is at 11 tomorrow morning. If you want to stay another night call the front desk before 9."

Kyosuke nodded as he took the key off the counter. "Thanks," he said. "I might do that." He hesitated before turning away from the counter, and then turned back to the girl still looking down at the book in front of her, though now she appeared to be reading, and not writing. "I don't suppose you could use any help here at the hotel? Or maybe you know of someplace that needs a worker? I'm a little short on cash and I'd like to make some if there's any work I can do."

The girl raised her eyes and stared at him through her bangs. "How should I know?" she snapped, before closing her eyes and visibly reigning herself in. "Sorry—rough night. I don't know about here, but I can ask around a little bit. You'd be surprised how many people come through this place in a night. Maybe tomorrow I'll have an answer for you."

Kyosuke nodded and smiled. "Thanks—I'd appreciate it." He turned to the stairs and started to climb up to the second floor, never hearing her mumble to herself, "Not that it'll matter much by morning."

lll TKI lll

Many hours later, the city seemed quiet for the night. All the bars and restaurants Kyosuke had passed earlier were now closed, and without their artificial light on the moonless night, the streets were nearly pitch black. A shadow moving along the outside of a building found this fact to be most convenient. It moved stealthily from window to window, creeping along the ledge of masonry between the first and second floors.

At each window the shadow paused, peering in for a moment before ducking down and moving to the next. Finally it stopped before a window and studied through it for a much longer period of time than it had any previous. Slowly, the window was opened from the outside, and shadow slipped in.

The blond man lay on the bed with his back to the window, the slow rise and fall of his exposed side signifying that he was truly asleep. The shadow crept closer to the bed, making not a sound. Neither was a sound made as a thin blade was extracted from the side of the shadow. The blade raised high in the air over the sleeping man's head, and started its downward arc.

Halfway down, an arm shot upwards from the bed and caught the wrist holding the knife. It twisted sharply, eliciting a gasp from the shadow and causing the knife to fall towards the bed. To avoid it, the man rolled quickly away, dragging the shadow with him, still held by the wrist. The shadow flew over the other side of the bed when Kyosuke let go and he heard it tumble once across the floor. Quickly jumping out of the bed to the opposite side, he flipped on the light, chasing the darkness out of the room.

"You?!" he exclaimed as the identity of his attacker was illuminated. The front desk girl stood across the room from him in a battle stance, glaring angrily at him.

"Oh, so NOW you recognize me—stupid bastard…" she groused as she rolled her eyes.

"Of course I do, you're the front desk girl," Kyosuke replied.

The young woman rolled her eyes. "Duh! Nice work, Sherlock! Stop playing stupid, I know you remember me from before—I definitely remember you! I've only ever met ONE blond idiot with whisker tattoos on his face."

Kyosuke furrowed his brow as he raised a hand to his cheek in curiosity. 'Is that what those are? Tattoos?' he wondered.

"Stop playing dumb, you moron. Hurry up and kill me since you stopped me from murdering you in your sleep—I don't have chakra anymore, so it shouldn't be too hard, even for you."

Kyosuke dropped his hand from his faced and grew more confused. "Kill you? Other than the fact that you just attacked me, why would I want to kill you?"

The woman sighed disbelievingly and said, "Are you really that much more of an idiot than I thought you were, or do you really not remember who I am?"

Kyosuke grew serious at the mention of memories. "Miss, I have absolutely no idea who you are—but if you recognize me, can you tell me who I am?"

This shocked the red haired woman out of her anger and she raised her eyebrows. "Wait a minute—you don't even know who YOU are? Oh, that's rich. Look, the only reason I'm here right now is because I thought you were here to kill me, but since you can't even remember who you are, I'll be leaving now." She tried to walk past him to get to the window, but was stopped when he grabbed her again, using a wristlock to keep her from getting away.

"Look," he ground out, now a little frustrated by her attitude, "I don't know who you are, but you seem to know me. I really need you to tell me what you know about me before you leave."

"Forget it, jerk!" she shot back. "This was my last stop on my way out of town. The few ninja here aren't much, but to someone like me without chakra they're more than enough for the job, and considering that I just stole the only thing in this town worth stealing, it probably won't be long until they catch up to me. As a matter of fact, you might want to get lost too—they might just try to pin it on you if they find their way here."

Just then a bright light flashed on outside the window. A loud voice called out from the street. "We know you're inside and that you have the Kappa's Mask—please return it and we won't be forced to kill you!"

"Blow it out your ear, jackass! Come on in here and get it if you want it so bad!" the woman screamed back through the window. Turning to Kyosuke, she said, "Look, if you help me get out of here I'll tell you everything I know—I won't even make you pay for the stupid hotel room."

Kyosuke was about to answer when four masked figures jumped through the open window and into the room. Taking up a fighting stance, and noticing the girl do the same, he answered, "Deal, Miss…?"

"Tayuya," she supplied, lunging for the nearest target and seeing Kyosuke do the same. Hopefully, they would live through this.


	7. Battle Instincts

**A/N: Okay, here we are with Chapter 7. It's a little shorter than some of the other chapters, but I wrestled for a long time about where to cut this one off, but I think where I did finally decide to end this chapter is the right place. One thing that's kind of getting on my nerves is switching back and forth between the two elements of the story--part of me feels like the story should be linear and try to keep both ends up to date with each other, but another part of me thinks I should just concentrate on one element per chapter. What do you think? Give me some feedback on how you think the story is flowing and how it might be good or bad. Thanks to all of you who are reviewing and adding to your Alerts and Favorites list. Talk it up in any forums--the more readers the merrier!**

**Disclaimer: Don't own it. Never will. Crap.**

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Yuuhi Kurenai leapt off the high branch and sailed forward toward the next tree. Even with her years off of active duty status, she was still keeping pace with her two companions, the Copy Nin Kakashi and the Hokage Tsunade. This mission was too important for her to let a little bit of fatigue to slow her down.

When Shizune had woken her last night it had taken more than a little convincing to finally get her moving towards the Hokage tower. It hadn't helped that the only thing Shizune would say was that Tsunade REALLY needed to see Kurenai in her office. Even so, once Kurenai was convinced it had taken even longer to wake up Shikamaru to come over and watch Hikaru, who was now almost a year old.

Even though Shikamaru had said that he needed to become a cool adult so he could protect her and Asuma's child, she hadn't quite expected the level of commitment that he had delivered. Knowing him as a child, she had not expected him to help her all that much, and had made a point of not asking for his help. To her great surprise though, he had shown up one day practically demanding to assist her, and was plainly hurt that she had not taken his promise seriously. Kurenai learned that day that perhaps she was a bit too quick to judge, and happily started to accept Shikamaru's help when she needed it.

That did not mean that some of his more deeply ingrained laziness had immediately disappeared, however. He still slept like a rock, and according to Shizune it had almost taken a rock to wake him. Once Shikamaru was there, however, Kurenai had left for the Hokage tower with full confidence that her daughter was in good hands and would be safe.

Once she had arrived at the tower and discovered the reason Tsunade had called for her in the middle of the night, she became once again the feared genjutsu mistress of Konoha, a Jounin in every sense of the title, in spite of her lack of training over the previous two years. Hinata's disappearance had hit her hard, as she had come to think of Hinata like a younger sister, and over the years the bond between sensei and student had evolved to a much more familiar relationship. Kurenai's only wish had been that she could provide for Hinata what she really needed most—a mother figure—but between missions and other distractions, Kurenai had only been able to do so much for the young heiress. And then Hinata had disappeared on the day of Sakura's memorial, and Kurenai had felt the loss as keenly as she had felt the loss of her own parents.

Kurenai glanced at Kakashi and frowned. As hard as the loss of Hinata had been on Kurenai, Kakashi had been nearly destroyed by the loss of the final member of his genin team.

Kakashi had always been eccentric—openly reading his dirty books, chronically tardy and with the worst excuses—but as his team had disintegrated, he had dropped back more and more into the depression that had ruled the early part of his life after his father had gone. Kurenai and the others—especially Gai—had tried to talk to him about it, but the only thing any of them could get out of him was that the loss of his team weight on him even more than the losses of his father, his teammate Obito, and his sensei, the Fourth. He saw it as his final failure—one that there might not be redemption for.

In his depression his had begged for the Hokage to return him to the ranks of ANBU, and for a short while his request had been granted. But after only three missions it was hard to ignore the change in Kakashi—he had been completely lost in his Inu mask, ceasing to exist as the cycloptic jounin. He completed his missions without any problems, but the after action reports from his team leader had indicated that he was unstable—it seemed like he was taking his grief and anger out on his targets. For ANBU, it was imperative that emotions be kept out of the job—it was fine to feel after the mission, but it could not be allowed to interfere in accomplishing objectives, and that was why the Hokage removed him from ANBU and placed him on a three month psychiatric probation.

The Kakashi that had returned to duty after that three months was much closer to the old Kakashi, but he still had a downtrodden and sad look about him. Kurenai, though she had never been very close with Kakashi, felt that they shared something in common since it was their students that had disappeared, and she tried to talk to him again.

He was surprisingly open the second time around, and they talked for many hours. Kakashi had confided in her that he felt that he had failed Sasuke by not reigning him in when he had the chance; that he had failed Sakura by not starting to prepare her earlier for her ninja career (he had been embarrassed to admit that he had not thought she'd make it past genin, and her progress as Tsunade's apprentice had dumbfounded him); but it was really Naruto's loss that bothered him the most.

He admitted that he had also not thought much of Naruto when he first met him, but over time it became apparent to him that Naruto had the makings of a great ninja, and even a Hokage, for one reason—Naruto was the essence of a ninja. He knew how to endure and to keep fighting, no matter what. Since becoming a genin Naruto had progressed so far beyond anyone's expectations that Kakashi had been inordinately proud of him—not because he felt that he had anything to do with it, but simply because he felt inspired by Naruto's mere presence. That was something that he had not felt since before the death of Fourth, the last man to truly inspire him.

Kurenai looked at Kakashi with searching eyes, wondering what he was feeling now. It was hard to tell with his usual mask covering his mouth and nose, but she could see that his eyes were hard-set and determined. He had recently started to keep his sharingan active constantly, in an attempt to build his chakra capacity and to change the dominance of his eyes so that he would no longer be forced to use only one at a time. It seemed to be working. Both eyes now held the same look, and she knew that a little bit of Inu had escaped, and that he was on the job now.

She looked ahead, following the green jacket of the Hokage as she leapt off another branch. It was nearing late afternoon now—the Hokage had briefed them and they had left immediately for Wave. They had been traveling for over twelve hours, halting only for necessary breaks for food and calls of nature. As the Hokage leapt again, Kurenai could see there was a bright light shining through the trees, glittering.

'Finally!' she thought to herself, 'That must be the ocean. We're almost there.'

True to her suspicions, within ten minutes the three ninja had broken out of the trees and landed on the shoreline of the continent. One mile to the north they could see the towering cement bridge that led to the island country. The three tensed to leap towards it when a speeding watercraft approached the shore, sounding a horn.

It continued its approach as they stood watching it, and they were able to make out two figures in the boat—both young men with dark hair. When the boat came close enough to the shore one of the young men called out to them.

"Hokage-sama! We're here to take you to the island—this boat is much faster than taking the bridge!"

The blond Hokage turned to Kakashi and Kurenai, grinning slightly. "I don't know about you two, but I think a nice relaxing boat ride sounds perfect about now. I'm not sure I'd be able to keep that pace up on hard concrete anyway."

Kakashi nodded. Kurenai smiled gratefully and said, "That does sound nice, Tsunade-sama."

In a single leap, the three ninja jumped out to the waiting boat, catching both youths off guard. Tsunade turned to Kurenai immediately, checking for chakra exhaustion and leading her to one of the seats in the back of the boat. Kakashi was about to sit down himself when a voice grabbed his attention.

"Kakashi-sensei? Is that you?"

Kakashi turned to the young man driving the boat and his eyes widened. "Inari-kun? My, you've certainly grown," the silver haired man smiled through his mask at the boy.

"Wow!" Inari shouted, "I should have known you'd come—it's because of Naruto-niisan, right?" At the mention of Naruto, Kakashi's smile disappeared and his eyes became shadowed, worrying Inari.

"I haven't seen Naruto in a long time, Inari. But yes, that is why I am here. I'm going to try to save him, at least."

Inari's confusion only grew, wondering what Kakashi meant by that last statement. Shrugging it off for later, he turned back to the controls of the boat. "Well, we should probably get going—the faster the better, right?"

While Inari started moving the boat out onto the seaway between the mainland and the Country of Waves, Kakashi sat down across from the other boy. "Hello, I'm Hatake Kakashi. I'm sorry, but I don't recognize you—are you a friend of Inari's?"

The second boy smiled and bowed as deeply as his seatbelt would allow him to. "It is an honor to meet you, Kakashi-san. I have heard all about you and how your team saved our country. Thank you, very much."

Kakashi chuckled and waved his hand, "No no, it wasn't really all that great. We just did what we had been hired to do."

The boy came up from his bow and smiled at the man. "That's not what I've heard, but thank you. I suppose I can say that Inari and I are friends, even though we only met for the first time yesterday. I'm Souda—I'm the fisherman's son that found the boat the girl was in."

Kakashi nodded in understanding. "I see. Well, it's good to meet you, Souda. Thank you for taking care of our friend—we really appreciate your help."

Souda opened his mouth to reply but was stopped when a shadow fell over him. He turned to look up at it only to come nearly eyes-to-chest with the blond Hokage. Flushing instantly, he turned his head away and looked at the floor of the boat.

"You're the one who found Hinata?" Tsunade asked. When the boy nodded slightly, Tsunade grabbed him by the arm and started to lift him out of his seat, causing him to unbuckle his seatbelt in a great hurry to avoid being ripped in half—her grip was _strong_.

"You need to come sit with us," she told him. "I want to ask you some questions." Souda nodded, looking back at Kakashi who merely shrugged.

The engine noise died down and Inari stood in front of everyone. "Everyone," he called, "Sorry to say this, but you all have to sit down and put your seatbelts on now—I'm about to start the trip to the island, and it's not a smooth ride at all."

Everyone nodded and did as he said. Once he saw that everyone was strapped in, he sat down behind the wheel of the boat and strapped himself in. He flipped a switch and the engine noise disappeared completely while a high-pitched whining noise started to build in its place. Inari threw a look over his shoulder and shouted, "Hold on!" before throwing the throttle forward to the stops. The boat quickly accelerated and sped off onto the sea at extremely high speed.

lll TKI lll

By the time Inari had slowed the boat down and maneuvered to the pier by his house thirty minutes later, the Hokage had gotten quite angry. Inari had not been lying when he had said that the ride was not smooth, but Tsunade had not expected the boat to actually go airborne for brief seconds as they launched off of waves like ramps. Even though she liked to pretend she was younger than she really was, it was getting hard to deny that her body was not as resilient as it had been in youth, and those landings had given her a rare glimpse of that truth.

Still, it wasn't the boy's fault, and there were more important things to take care of. She had managed to talk to the other boy, Souda during the trip, and get the whole story out of him. He was a very respectful and well mannered boy, and she entertained thoughts of introducing Naruto to him when they got him back. There were no doubts in her mind—they were going to get Naruto back. But first, they would have to rescue Hinata.

They disembarked from the boat and walked quickly towards the house, except for Inari and Souda who ran off towards the town, no doubt to relax after waiting for them all day. Kakashi noted that the house had not changed in spite of the family's improved social standing, and it made him happy that some part of those days still existed. The door opened before they even left the pier, and a dark haired woman came running out to meet them.

"Hokage-sama," she greeted with a bow, which was quickly returned. "Please come in, all of you. She's woken up twice today, but never long enough for us to talk to her, just to give her some water."

"Hokage-sama, this is Tsunami—Inari's mother," Kakashi interjected as they neared the house.

"It's good to meet you, Tsunami. Thank you for taking care of Hinata for us. We owe you a debt of gratitude that we hope we'll be able to repay to you one day."

"Not at all," Tsunami insisted as they entered the house. "Kakashi and his team did so much for us, and besides—there's still the matter of the underpaid mission that my father contracted, so we can just call it even if you want."

"That's true," Tsunade acquiesced. "Still, you will always have a friend in Konoha." At that moment, the group entered the kitchen, and saw Hinata on the table, face down. Her breathing was shallow and she looked sickly, covered in a thin sheen of sweat. Tsunade swore.

"The wounds have probably become infected. I need to get to work right away. Kurenai, Kakashi, go get comfortable. This is going to take a while, I can tell already." She lifted the bandages off Hinata's back, carefully. "She's been cut by one of Orochimaru's swords, and the wound is festering."

Kurenai and Kakashi reluctantly left the room, led by Tsunami. "You must both be tired," she said. "We have some guest rooms, I'll take you to them. I'll come get you as soon as Hokage-sama is done."

They were shown to their rooms where they both quickly fell asleep, leaving one ear perked for Tsunami—they didn't want to miss a second when she came for them.

lll TKI lll

It was long after dark by the time Tsunade finished, and she was exhausted. Orochimaru had a bad habit of poisoning his swords liberally, and there had been a lot to clean out of the wounds and Hinata's bloodstream before she could try to heal anything. Deciding that they would be better off looking into things further in the morning, and by that time Hinata should be well rested as well, she headed towards the room Kurenai was in to get some sleep.

She was surprised as she passed through the living room by Inari, who was still awake and appeared to be meditating.

"Aren't you up a little past your bedtime, young man?" she asked in her most matronly voice.

Without moving except for his mouth, the boy answered, "No, Hokage-sama—I still need to go get my grandfather. Thirty more seconds please."

The Hokage stood there, watching the boy meditate. True to his word, after thirty seconds had passed he opened his eyes and stood up. "Thank you Hokage-sama. I'm glad you're here," he offered her a bow, which she returned.

"So what did you mean you need to go get Tazuna—where is he? I haven't seen him all day. Was he working?" she asked.

Inari scratched the back of his head in a very Naruto-like way that almost made Tsunade flinch. "Not really—I think he was too ashamed to be here when you got here, so he headed out to the bar early. Not much was going on that he needed to be around today, so I think he's just been hiding."

Tsunade grinned mirthfully. "I see," she said. "Well, you should probably go get him then. I'm headed off to sleep—we'll start again in the morning, and try to keep Tazuna from disappearing."

"Hai, Hokage-sama," Inari said, heading for the door.

"One more question for you Inari," Tsunade called as he lay a hand on the door. "That was pretty lucky, you driving up when you did earlier today. How did you know where we would be?"

Inari grinned. "I can sense chakra—and between you, Kakashi-sensei, and Kurenai-san it was kind of hard to miss." He opened the door and stepped out. "Goodnight, Hokage-sama."

Tsunade turned back to the stairs across the room and started climbing them.

'Well, that's an interesting little tidbit. Who'd have thought?'

lll TKI lll

Tayuya had engaged the closest attacker, leaving three unchecked. All of them apparently decided he was a big enough threat that all three should attack him simultaneously. Kyosuke wasn't really sure what to do, but when the first of the three tossed some shuriken at him, he instinctively caught them between his fingers and flung them back, catching the man in the wrists, arms and legs. He stumbled and fell to the floor, apparently disabled.

The other two didn't waste time covering the distance between them and Kyosuke, and he was quickly engaged in a taijutsu battle, fending off punches from one side and kicks from another. Kyosuke redirected a punch from his left into the right attacker's throat with a flat-palmed block, then threw his left elbow into the puncher's face, knocking him back. The right attacker choked and wheezed before falling to his hands and knees.

The one Kyosuke had elbowed in the face looked up and Kyosuke could see the cloth mask was glistening with wetness. He came at Kyosuke again, anger and killing intent visible in his eyes. Kyosuke calmly dodged his attack, reversing their positions and putting both of his masked assailants on one side. The one who had been punched in the throat was standing up now, but seemed a little unsteady on his feet, so Kyosuke leapt forward and planted a knee in the man's stomach, successfully driving the air out of his lungs and knocking him unconscious.

The second one, with the broken nose, had removed a kunai from his hip pouch and attempted to stab Kyosuke. He bent backwards in time to miss the downward fall of the kunai, and then grabbed the outstretched arm and wrenched the elbow around, forcing him to drop the knife. Still holding the arm, Kyosuke flipped the man over onto his back and dropped his knee into his solar plexis, driving the air from his lungs, and then tapped him in both temples simultaneously. Kyosuke watched as his eyes fluttered closed and he lost consciousness.

He was just standing up when an arm soaked in blood from the wrist snaked around his neck from behind. Kyosuke instantly dropped his legs out from under him, pulling his attacker over the top and allowing Kyosuke to roll him over a shoulder. The enemy rolled through the flip and came up on both feet, facing Kyosuke. He made a series of handseals and his fists were hardened into stone, then he charged.

Acting on instinct, Kyosuke brought his right hand back, fingers splayed, and felt something come to life in his palm. Not having time to look at it, he brought it forward and tried to catch the enemy's punch in his hand. To his surprise there was a dark blue glowing orb in his hand, and when it met the stone fist flying towards him he heard a cracking, shattering sound. The orb faded away and the stone-fisted man had fallen to his knees, clutching the stump of his right arm. The orb had completely demolished his stone fist, and the man had not been able to maintain the jutsu through the pain of losing his hand. Driving a knee into his head, Kyosuke finally was able to bring a halt to his flurry of motion. He surveyed the three incapacitated men on the floor, wondering at how he had been able to defeat them—he had barely thought about any of his movements.

'What was that?' he questioned internally. Flipping his palms up he stared at them. 'What was that blue sphere in my hand—how did I do that?'

A scraping noise from behind him reminded him of Tayuya's fight. He whipped around and was surprised to see her bound and held with a kunai at her neck.

"Alright you," the last of the masked men spoke. "I don't know who you are, but you'd better surrender unless you want to see her get hurt."

Kyosuke narrowed his eyes. Without any thought at all a small bit of energy left him and he felt part of his attention, or maybe his consciousness, go with it, and he instantly saw why. He relaxed his stance and his voice. "Sorry, man. I don't even know her," he grinned and rubbed the back of his head. "She's just the girl who checked me in to this hotel. You can have her, I was just trying to get some sleep."

Tayuya's eyes widened in surprise and the masked man's eyes rounded in confusion just as one hand grasped the back of his head and another reached around his forehead. Before he could react, the two hands pulled apart, spinning his head around and snapping his neck. He fell bonelessly to the floor, releasing Tayuya from his grasp. There was a slight pop from behind her, signifying the exit of the shadow clone. She quickly unbound herself and grabbed Kyosuke's shoulder, who had walked over and was looking down at the single dead body in the room. The action caused him to snap his head and look Tayuya in the eyes.

The remorse in his eyes surprised her.

'Does he actually feel bad about killing that jerk-wad? Great, just my rotten stinking luck to get stuck with some sappy, overly sentimental bastard,' she groused internally. Outwardly she spoke softly but surely, "Come on, you idiot. We've gotta get out of here before more of them show up, unless you feel like snapping any more necks tonight."

Kyosuke shook his head as she let go of his shoulder and ran out of the room. He followed, stopping only to grab his hip pouch from the table. They ran up the stairs and to the roof, where they leapt from building to building out of the city. They continued to run once they got to the forest and didn't look back for even a second.


	8. On the Run

**A/N: Has it been long enough for all of those people who were actually interested in this to move on with their lives? Oh it has? That must mean it's time for an update. Sorry it took so long**** folks, I don't really have any excuses so I'll just forgo all of that. For those of you that are still around, thank you--it makes me glad that at least one other person out there is enjoying this story like I am. Please let me know what you think. Hopefully I'll be a little active on this story through the next few months. I am deployed to the Middle East right now though, so things may come up. Please be patient (as if you haven't been already and I promise this will get moving. I want to know how it ends too.**

**Disclaimer: Blah blah sue me, I don't care. It's not mine.**

* * *

In the pre-dawn twilight two gray silhouettes sprinted along the sandy shore as the tide slowly came in, wave by wave. Their footprints did not remain long after their passing with the water washing them away.

Just before the full break of day when the barest of shadows still clung to the land, the two figures encountered the last of the sandy beach, and stared across a river at a cliff towering several hundred feet above them. The taller of the two looked to the shorter, and noticed the fatigue on her features.

"Looks like we're out of beach. We'll break here for awhile," he said.

Tayuya turned to glare at him, but not having the breath to argue, she silently agreed and plopped down on the rocky sand with her back to a palm tree. They had been running non-stop since they made their escape from the city and heading south along the coast. The sand on the beaches had slowed them down considerably, especially Tayuya. She had been okay on the roof tops and trees, though Kyosuke had had to catch her once or twice when she lost her footing on some of the trees. He had not said a word, or reacted in the slightest—which Tayuya decided was good for his overall health.

'If he says one word…' she groused internally, trying to catch her breath.

Kyosuke had taken a seat against an adjacent palm tree, sitting so he was facing her. He stared at her for several long moments with a puzzled look on his face.

'She seems to know me, but…' he thought, but he got nothing at all when he looked at her. No niggling feeling of a memory trying to come forward or any sense of familiarity whatsoever.

Tayuya could feel him staring, and it was starting to piss her off, but she was too tired to say anything about it for a few minutes, so she let it be. When she had caught her breath and he was still staring though, she'd had enough.

"Okay, you freak! I'm not a free show or something—I'm not going to get up and start dancing around for you so just stop looking at me, you stupid pervert!" she screamed at him. To her satisfaction, he flinched and turned away, embarrassed.

"…Sorry," he said a moment later. She opened her eyes and looked over at him, waiting. As she expected, he continued—but only after locking his gaze with hers again, which she did not expect. "I don't recognize you at all. When I woke up some of my stuff managed to affect me, and I remembered just a tiny bit, or maybe felt something, but with you? Nothing." He looked at her critically, "Are you sure you know me?"

Tayuya laughed a mirthless laugh and leaned her head back with her eyes closed. "Ha! I never said I knew who you were, I just said I recognized you. The only time I ever saw your ugly face before was when me and my team were trying to take that emo-fag Sasuke to Orochimaru's place. You and your team came after us and we fought for a couple of minutes. I just figured that you had tracked me down somehow and were coming after me. I couldn't figure out how you knew I was still alive though—that butt-ugly sand girl's summon practically killed me," she nearly mumbled. Looking back up at Kyosuke, she continued, "The only other thing I know about you is that you're from Konoha."

Kyosuke listened to her, feeling his heart sink when she revealed that she didn't know who he was, and only recognizing the name 'Sasuke' from the mask he had found. He frowned and dropped his head between his knees.

Tayuya wasn't quite sure what she had said, but it was clear Kyosuke was not happy. Not that she cared—he may have helped her a little bit at the hotel, even though she had been trying to kill him and he had no idea who she was, but that didn't mean she gave a rat's behind about how he felt.

"Tayuya, right?" Kyosuke suddenly asked. "Tayuya what?" he added.

"I don't have a last name you dork," she shot back. "Just call me Tayuya, you weirdo." They fell silent for a few moments, until she spoke again. "You really have no idea who you are, do you?"

Kyosuke shook his head. "No. I woke up yesterday with only the things I have on me in the middle of a giant crater north of here. It looked like there used to be a town there, but there was nobody left. I managed to figure out how to get to that city we just left and that's where you came in. That's my whole story."

Tayuya whistled. "Wow, that sucks. You're really screwed!"

Kyosuke made a face. "It doesn't sound like you're much better off, you know. It seems to me that you're living as a thief and are just barely surviving at that. So what's your story?"

Tayuya's smirk disappeared while he threw her own comments back in her face. "Look butt-face, I could get up and just walk away and leave you here but for two things: you helped me out last night, so I owe you; and…"

Kyosuke squinted at her. "And?"

"…I need your help to get up the cliff across the river," she barely whispered.

Kyosuke quirked an eyebrow. "What do you mean? I thought we were going to follow the river or something. I don't know how to get up that. What am I supposed to do?"

Tayuya glared back at him incredulously. "What do you mean you don't know how to get up that? You just scale the wall with chakra. Obviously that's something I can't do, since my chakra system is burnt out."

Kyosuke frowned. That was the third time she'd mentioned that 'chakra' stuff. "What do you mean, about chakra? What is that? It sounds really familiar, but I really don't know what you're talking about."

Tayuya regarded him with a curious glare. "Wow, you really have lost your memory if you don't even remember what chakra is." She paused and closed her eyes, holding up one finger in front of her, trying her best to look like a teacher. "Chakra– " she began, but to Kyosuke, his vision flashed and her image was replaced by that of a pink haired girl standing behind a desk in what looked like a classroom.

"_Chakra is made up of spiritual and physical energy. The physical energy, or stamina, is the energy that keeps our bodies alive and is increased through physical training. Spiritual energy sustains our spirits and is developed over time by concentration and mental training. When the two are combined to form chakra, it can be molded by a person into an outward manifestation of one of two types: ninjutsu and genjutsu, or otherwise known as physical attacks and illusions. Chakra flows through our bodies along pathways which make up the chakra circulatory system, which works the same way as the normal circulatory system, except that it transports chakra instead of blood. Chakra moves out of our bodies through the tenketsu, which are small pores chakra flows through when we mold it." _

_The girl smiled prettily as a man's voice complimented her, before directing her to sit down and continuing on about chakra…_

Kyosuke shook his head as Tayuya finished her explanation and opened her eyes. Kyosuke felt wetness on his cheeks and moved his hand up to wipe it away, realizing that he had been crying.

"Oi!" Tayuya shouted, "I know it was a good freakin' explanation, but if it moved your sorry butt to tears then we might have to cut down on the freakin' lessons. What's your problem anyway, crybaby?"

Kyosuke stared at his wet fingers for a moment before answering. "I…I think I remembered something. When you started to talk about chakra I remembered a girl…with pink hair. She was explaining how chakra worked and what it was, but I don't remember her name. I don't remember anything!" he shouted, pounding his fist into the sand.

Tayuya wasn't sure what to say to that, so she fell back on her usual method. "It was probably some stupid girl that dumped your pathetic butt when she found out how much of a loser you were." She smiled smugly, waiting for him to get angry. Instead she got silence, so she looked back at the blond and found him looking down at the ground.

"Maybe you're right, Tayuya," he murmured, completely catching the girl off guard. "Maybe all I am is a big crybaby, and that pink haired girl is just an ex-girlfriend. But I don't think so—when I think about her, I feel like…like there's a hole in my chest, and it doesn't feel like rejection. It feels more like she's gone. For good. I don't know why, but I have this terrible feeling that she's dead, and somehow it's my fault." He looked up at his acerbic companion. "Does that make any sense? Does that sound right? Is that what it feels like to lose someone?"

Tayuya's mouth failed her, for once. No matter how hard she tried, she simply could not get any of her standard barbs to issue out at the man before her, looking so lost, and yet so earnest. The look on his face told her that he knew what it meant to bet everything and lose, and then have to suffer through living afterwards. She suddenly felt an unbidden wave of sympathy for this man—and then she washed it away. "Look you dork, people die. There's nothing you can do about it so you might as well just get over it."

Kyosuke forced a sad smile. "Yeah, I guess you're right. It's kind of silly to miss someone I don't even remember, isn't it?" he asked, but his voice betrayed his lack of conviction.

Unexpectedly, he shook off his melancholy and met Tayuya's eyes with determination. "Okay, so I remember what chakra is—when I unsealed the scrolls in my pouch I didn't know exactly what the energy that I was using was called, but now I remember. I guess that's how I did that thing with my hand at the hotel?"

Tayuya looked at him strangely, wondering if he was always so manic-depressive, but finally answered. "Yeah, though I have no idea how you did that—that's a special technique that I've never seen before. Do you remember how to scale walls by chance?"

Kyosuke shook his head. "No…sorry."

Tayuya grit her teeth. "Tch. Figures. I have no idea how I'm going to show you this without being able to actually demonstrate, but here it goes." She got up and moved to the tree Kyosuke sat under, looking down at him. "When you unsealed those scrolls you mentioned, you had to focus the chakra to your hands, right?" Kyosuke nodded. "Okay, well this is similar, but instead of focusing it to your hands, you focus it to your feet. Stand up and give it a try."

Kyosuke's eyes widened as she spoke. "Wait a second! Is this anything like walking on water?" he asked.

"Well, yeah," she answered. "Why?"

"Well that I can do, but I don't know how it works. On my way to town yesterday I was just walking along the beach as the tide came in and didn't realize I was walking on water until a wave smashed into me."

"Well, water walking is usually a bit harder than tree climbing, so I guess you should be able to. But you don't know how to actually focus the chakra to your feet consciously?"

Kyosuke shook his head. "Like I said, I didn't even realize I was doing it until I got all wet. It's like I do this stuff instinctually."

Tayuya sighed. "Okay, let's start by focusing chakra to your hands. Maybe we can backtrack from there and get it to your feet."

Kyosuke nodded, and before he had even thought about it, his hands were encased in a bright blue glow. Tayuya peered at his hands. "Dang, you're putting out quite a bit there. And yours is darker blue than most people's too…almost indigo," she trailed off. "Did you feel anything? Did you feel a draining sensation from around your stomach area?"

Kyosuke shook his head. "Sort of. It doesn't so much feel like draining as it does like letting the pressure out of a soda that's been shaken up. But I still don't know how to make it go to my feet instead of my hands…" He closed his eyes and concentrated, thinking about chakra and hoping to remember something. For a long time nothing came to him, and all he saw was the darkness behind his eyelids.

Tayuya had been about to suggest something, but she noticed Kyosuke close his eyes and calm down. 'Heh, I guess he beat me to it. He doesn't really seem like the type for meditation, but it might work.'

Tayuya sat watching him for several minutes as he sat beneath the palm tree. Watching the breeze blow through his long blonde spikes and seeing the serene look on his face, Tayuya was forced to admit that all in all he wasn't bad—at least not bad _looking._ 'I'll hold off judgment on the rest of him until later. He still annoys me,' she thought to herself. 'Speaking of annoying, did the idiot fall asleep? He's been there for way longer than he seems like he'd be able to stay quiet…'

Tayuya leaned forward to confirm her suspicions, walking forward on her hands and knees until she was almost nose to nose with the blonde, listening carefully for the telltale signs of his sleeping. As she listened however, his blue eyes suddenly snapped open and locked onto her brown ones—right before they both screamed and fell backwards away from each other.

"Wha…what the heck were you doing?" Kyosuke nearly shouted.

"Me? I'm not the one who fell asleep when he's supposed to be trying to remember how to tree-climb!" Tayuya shot back, completely forgetting that she had never ascertained whether or not he had indeed been sleeping.

"Fell asleep?" Kyosuke asked, confused. "I never fell asleep—I was meditating."

Tayuya hung her head and grumbled unintelligibly. When she lifted her head again she found Kyosuke attempting to climb the tree—but not like a ninja, more like a child would.

Seeing that Tayuya was occupied, Kyosuke had decided to try his idea. 'When I was walking on water, I didn't even need to think about it, I just did it—the same with the fight in the hotel and that weird ball. Maybe if I just put myself in the right situation, I can figure this out too…'

He could feel Tayuya's eyes on him as he continued to climb all the way to the top, hugging the tree the whole way.

"That's great, meathead, but how is that supposed to help us? No way can you carry me up the cliff that way—not that I'd let you," the redhead called from below. Kyosuke simply turned to look over his shoulder at her before he grinned and let his hands slip off of the tree.

"Idiot!" Tayuya screamed as she impulsively ran to the base of the tree. She wasn't really sure what she was thinking, because when she arrived it dawned on her that a body much larger than hers was about to land right on top of her, so she cringed and waited for the impact.

Which never came. What did come was a chuckle that sounded very close.

She looked up and nearly poked her eyes out on the blonde spikes hanging just at eye level. They turned away as Kyosuke craned his neck to turn towards her—he was hanging upside down by his feet, gripping the sides of the trunk.

She looked up at Kyosuke, who was staring at her grinning like an idiot. "How?" she demanded, "How did you do that?"

Kyosuke turned his gaze on her, and it was so ridiculously happy that she nearly felt herself grin, as if it was contagious. "I don't know. I figured I already know how to do it subconsciously and I should trust my instincts, and so I did. This is awesome!" he shouted exuberantly. He ran up and down the tree, laughing like a fresh genin after learning his first jutsu.

At first Tayuya found it amusing, in a very adolescent way, but eventually the charm wore off and she had to end it. "Okay you moron! I get it, you're happy you learned a new trick! Now get down here and let's get moving. I want to get to the next village before dark," she called.

Kyosuke jumped down from the top of the tree, landing squarely in front of Tayuya. "Ossu! Hop on!" he exclaimed, turning his back to Tayuya.

She stared at his back for a moment until he turned and grinned over his shoulder at her. Deciding that it couldn't be as bad as she thought, she hopped onto his back and held on to his neck. After hooking his arms under her knees he leapt across the river and ran straight up the rock face, never stumbling once.

For his passenger though, the ride was not so smooth, so she held on for dear life—without chakra.

And she introduced Kyosuke to a whole new level of cursing and insults.

lll TKI lll

Several hours later as the sun was going down, Kyosuke spotted lights ahead of him in the dusky twilight.

"Ne, Tayuya—wake up," he said, jostling his passenger lightly. She had yelled at him pretty good for his climbing stunt, so in a self-preservation move he decided to keep them on the cliffside until she calmed down. That would have been fine, had she not fallen asleep before calming down. Kyosuke was more than a little nervous about her waking up and really walloping him, but once he left the cliffside and readjusted her weight on his back she had settled in quite comfortably. And so Kyosuke had continued traveling to their current point.

Now, however, he needed Tayuya to guide them—he didn't know where she had been intending to go. "Tayuya," he said a little louder, bouncing her a little bit on his back to help wake her up, "We're here, I just need you to tell me where we're going."

He heard a yawn and a smacking noise from behind his left ear, and then he went deaf.

By means of shrieking banshee.

His fears suddenly realized, he dropped Tayuya on her butt faster than gravity should have allowed and raised his hands placatingly in front of him as he whirled to face the angry woman.

For her part, Tayuya had woken from a very nice nap to the sounds of the waves crashing against the rocky shore and a warm body beneath her—which was what alarmed her and caused her to unleash her sonic assault on Kyosuke's ears. By the time she finally remembered what had happened Kyosuke was already in front of her talking so fast she couldn't understand a single word, and she was growing angrier by the minute. Her eye started to twitch and she reached for one of her throwing knives when she was finally able to glean something intelligible from Kyosuke's ramble.

"…and I'm really sorry! I didn't mean to make you mad, but then you fell asleep and I didn't know what to do so I just kept heading south on the coast like you said and now we're here and the city lights are right there but I don't know where to go so I had to wake you up and I'm really sorry! I promise I'll…"

"Kyosuke!" she shouted, causing him to immediately cease his monologue. "I'll kill you later for trying to take advantage of me," she smirked seeing his face blanch, "but thanks for bringing us here—I didn't think you'd actually carry me the whole freakin' way you whack-job."

Kyosuke, sensing that she was joking (after a fashion), relaxed and locked his hands behind his head and grinned widely at her. During the journey along the coast he had had a lot of time to think. In spite of everything he didn't have and might never recover, he decided that things could definitely be much worse. He did have a couple of good things going for him anyway, between his health and his apparent skill in chakra use (as long as he could force the techniques to come).

Still grinning at Tayuya while she smirked at him, he thought, 'Yeah, it could be a lot worse. As long as I'm alive I can make things better, so I'll start by just trying to be happy with what I've got.'

About that time, his stomach growled loudly. 'Well, maybe there are a few things that I'm lacking…'

Tayuya made a face as her stomach gurgled too. "Crap. I guess we haven't eaten in a while," she said as she stood up. "Come on, I know a place we can eat before we make our scheduled stop." She took the lead and Kyosuke followed her into the town.

lll TKI lll

Kyosuke and Tayuya walked in silence along the darkened streets of the town, having filled their stomachs and turned to business matters. It was a tense silence they enjoyed, owing mostly to the awkward events at dinner.

Since Kyosuke had bailed her out the previous evening, Tayuya had offered to buy him dinner. They had eaten at a teriyaki shop, and although he had enjoyed the Unagi Donburi that Tayuya had ordered for him (who knew eel could taste so good?), he still felt that it was somehow not completely satisfying, and had said so.

Tayuya had nearly strangled Kyosuke over the giant stack of bowls next to him as he made the ridiculous statement.

Kyosuke had apologized afterwards and tried to better explain that what he had meant was that although he really did like the food she had bought for him, there was something in the back of his mind that was screaming for something else, but he couldn't tell what.

'Jeez, you'd think he'd know a little better than to say something like that to a girl who just bought him dinner,' Tayuya fumed. 'I mean, I know he lost his memory and everything, but he sure seems to be on the slow side sometimes…'

Before too long, they arrived at the place that Tayuya had been leading them—a large house that was even too big to be called a house. A mansion, really. Kyosuke reached forward to open the gate when Tayuya stopped him.

"Nah," she shook her head. "He reserves this entrance for his special guests. We're just riff-raff—we'll use the back." And with that, she leapt off around the side of the walled property with Kyosuke right behind. It didn't take much more than a minute for her to find the inconspicuous shrub hiding the secondary entrance to the property, a rusted gate just large enough for one person to squeeze through. From there they strolled across the lawn to the patio and entered through a door on the veranda looking out to the sea.

Tayuya led them through a short series of corridors until they arrived at what appeared to be a library. Moving quickly between the stacks, Kyosuke noted the large number of artifacts and glass cases along the outer walls of the room. 'This place is almost more like a museum,' he thought to himself. Before he could discover any more a loud booming voice pierced his thoughts.

"Tayuya! Wonderful to see you. I suppose this means you've brought me something?" the voice asked. Kyosuke had fallen behind Tayuya while looking around and now hurried to catch up. "Of course Nobunaga. I'm sure as heck not here because I missed you," Tayuya replied with a hint of disgust. Kyosuke rounded the end of the stacks and immediately saw why.

Tayuya was several stacks down to his left glaring at a…_robust_ man, to put it mildly, sitting in a large leather chair with a large plate of shrimp and oysters to one side. It was apparent from the stains on his shirt and the large pile of empty shells that he had been there for some time. Kyosuke involuntarily grimaced—luckily his host did not seem to notice him.

"Tayuya," the large man called Nobunaga drawled without conviction, "you wound me. Now what have you brought me? As I recall I had asked you to recover something that was taken from me..."

The girl nodded and reached into her hip pouch, extracting the mask that had ultimately cost at least one man his life. The man's face brightened immediately, causing his already red face to shine in the dim light. "Ah! I have missed this one," he cooed. Kyosuke looked at the mask that Tayuya was carefully handing to Nobunaga—it certainly didn't look like anything special. It mostly looked like piece of tree bark covered in river muck and seaweed. Tayuya showed no reaction, but she seemed to relax a little when it was no longer in her hand. Nobunaga meanwhile looked adoringly at the hideous mask. "The Kappa's Mask was one of the first in my collection—and unfortunately one of the first I sold after the civil war here in Water Country."

"Great, I'm glad you've got your crappy mask. Can I have my money? I've got places to go," Tayuya said gruffly. The rotund man smirked at the much smaller girl and started to reach into his coat with a sweaty hand. Kyosuke tensed to leap forward, afraid the man was going to draw a weapon, when suddenly his face went slack in surprise and he slumped forward, revealing the kunai buried in the back of his skull. Kyosuke's eyes moved quickly from the protruding object to the silhouetted figure beyond.

When the figure was joined by five others, Kyosuke placed his hand on Tayuya's shoulder and pulled her behind him. "Stay behind me," he said quietly. Tayuya saw no immediate reason to argue with him, since it was easy to see that these new opponents were a level above the minor police force they had faced in their previous fight.

Kyosuke surveyed the six oncoming ninja as they slowly crossed the room. He knew he could hold a few of them back in a fight, but he wasn't sure he could keep them all busy enough to keep Tayuya safe or give her a chance to escape.

'What can I do? What I really need is more people on my side…' Kyosuke's eyes widened as he remembered the hotel room when Tayuya had been held hostage. 'That's right! I made a copy of myself, and it was able to take out the enemy without me taking a step. Now how did I do that?'

He tried to remember what he had done to clone himself (he wasn't sure what else to call it), but before he could force any memory to surface his opponents made the first move, throwing an assortment of shuriken and kunai. Running on instinct, Kyosuke picked up Tayuya and ran, pulling down stacks behind them as he ran.

'Crap! I need more time—I feel like I know what I need to do, but I can't remember how to do it!' he screamed internally. They rounded the corner through the doorway with the whistling sounds of more kunai flying in their direction. The long hallway caused Kyosuke to pause a moment.

'Okay, there's no place for me to hide down this whole hallway. With Tayuya on my back she's totally exposed while we run…' The thudding of kunai hitting the doorway behind him jolted him into action. He ran up the wall on their left, changing his grip on Tayuya as they climbed.

For her part, Tayuya was getting angrier by the second. 'Those buttheads cost me my pay! I didn't really like the guy, but at least he never tried to cheat me out of my fee. And now this blond bastard is toting me around like a piece of friggin' luggage! I'm not totally helpless you idiot!' As they stopped over the doorway, upside-down, the first of their pursuers started through the door, and Tayuya wrenched herself free from Kyosuke's grip, eliciting a hiss from him and drawing the ninja's attention upwards, just in time for Tayuya to plunge her knife into his forehead.

Kyosuke breathed a sigh of relief. 'One down, five to go,' he thought. Tayuya suddenly gasped and started to sprint down the hallway, followed by a fast moving torrent of water that was sure to either drown her or crush her. 'Crap! I can't get to her in time,' Kyosuke realized. He started to run towards her anyway, wishing that he could remember how to make clones.

And like he had really made a wish, a clone appeared running alongside Tayuya, scooping her up and taking her to safety on the ceiling. Kyosuke quickly ran to them and took Tayuya from…well, himself, he supposed. Meeting his own eyes (which was a strange experience anyway), understanding seemed to pass to his clone and he ran back towards the library to hold their pursuers at bay.

Meanwhile Tayuya looked at him with frustrated, but grateful eyes. "Thanks, I guess. That's two I owe you."

Kyosuke shrugged, looking at her upside down. "Thank me later. We still need to survive this." Adjusting his grip, he ran toward the far end of the hallway and the lone skylight. Just as he reached it, he received a brief jolt of memories from fighting the pursuing ninja.

'Whoa…that was weird. I'll have time to think about that later though.' Twisting in a nearly inhuman fashion, he threw himself and Tayuya upward through the skylight and out into the darkness.


	9. Escape

**A/N: Alright! Another update is finally out. Thank you to all of you who have been reading and waiting patiently (or not) for the next chapter. This one is slightly longer than the others (I think) so at least you've got that going for you. It's hard to find time to write over here without cutting into my sleeping time, but when inspiration strikes I can't help but start writing. Figures, I had all the time in the world before I left and couldn't get this thing done, but now I'm here and it's like the ideas won't stop. Anyway, a little more of Naruto's adventures in this chapter and then it's back to Hinata and Co. There's some action in this chapter and I don't really feel that fight scenes are my strong suit, so please let me know how I did. Hopefully I'll have the next one out in a month or two, but I can't make promises other than it will come eventually. Thank you to everyone for your support and enjoy the latest installment of "The Kougu Identity." **

* * *

Once out on the roof, Kyosuke set Tayuya on her own feet and took a moment to survey the landscape of the roof of the large house. It was a virtual playground for a ninja, with plenty of places to set traps, to hide and flank behind an opponent, and to generally make a mess out of any organized force on the roof. Truly, it was as natural of a battleground as Kyosuke could have hoped for.

'_I guess this must have something to do with how I strategize—I can see the possibilities in everything up here, but only because I'm getting ready to fight. On the way in I wasn't even paying attention to any of the things I've noticed in the last 10 seconds,'_ he thought to himself even as he started setting his assault positions around the roof.

With Tayuya in tow, he moved behind a large spire and unloaded his hip pouch, unsealing the scroll that held all of the weapons—mainly the senbon, kunai, and the ninjato. He set the last aside and concentrated on using the other tools effectively. With only seconds before their pursuers found them on the roof, he stowed his weapons on his person and wished some clones into existence, each with their own arsenal. Without a word they all dispersed to strategically located hiding spots surrounding the skylight they had used to get onto the roof.

The original looked back at Tayuya when the clones were in position and said quietly but firmly, "Stay here." She looked like she wanted to argue, but before she could make her case he stole her visage and image and stepped out from behind the spire, leaving her with some spare weapons and his ninjato.

No sooner had he stepped out from cover than the five remaining assailants jumped up through the skylight and instantly spread into a battle formation.

"Where's the blonde?" one asked.

"Who cares," said a second. "We came for her—she should be easy enough prey not being able to use chakra."

With no further spoken words, the five moved outward from their battle formation, focusing solely on the red-headed female figure in their midst, unaware in their haste that their true target still lay in hiding. In unison they launched a barrage of sharpened metal at the motionless and expressionless figure on the roof. With barely a flicker of movement the barrage was deflected harmlessly into the ceramic roof tiles. The five ninja landed and began to close their circle, attention still focused on the disguised Kyosuke.

All at once the blonde clones attacked in sequence, causing it to appear as though Kyosuke was moving at blinding speeds around the outside of the ninja. By continually popping up or out of cover one at a time they maintained the illusion that Kyosuke was moving quickly from cover to cover without any noticeable use of chakra. This fact put the assaulting ninja on edge and they were well distracted by this tactic, allowing the real threat to close and engage them.

In the distraction provided by his clones, the real Kyosuke (still disguised as Tayuya) took the moment to engage one opponent at a time, either disabling them temporarily or removing them from the fight for good. He engaged the first by launching a grip of senbon into one man's exposed back, and then using a quick chop to the sides of the neck to render him unconscious. The thud of his body hitting the ground alerted the ninja next him, but it was only just in time for the man to turn directly into the path of Kyosuke's hammer-fist, instantly shattering his nose and knocking out his teeth. A sharp palm thrust upwards and the broken shards of bone were speared into his frontal brain matter, killing him instantly.

By then the other three ninja had realized the more proximal of the two threats, and turned to face him (or as they saw it, her). Kyosuke gained some standoff distance and eyed them warily, doing his best to not give away his disguise by using what he now recognized as chakra. As he faced off against his opponents he could feel his body literally humming with energy, begging to be let loose. The force and apparent sentience of his own energy made him all the more reluctant to use it, and he set his observations aside for a time when he would be better able to examine them. His clones were still busy harassing the three remaining targets, but by this time the somewhat complex pattern he had worked out in his head before creating the clones was becoming apparent to his enemies and they were able to deflect the thrown weapons with almost no thought. Knowing that the value of his illusion was quickly fading, Kyosuke made his move.

He feinted towards his nearest opponent, causing the barest of flinches, before putting on a burst of speed he hadn't known he possessed and appearing in the midst of the trio. Without wasting a second he drew a kunai and slashed across his front, catching one of the enemies across the gut, but dealing only minimal damage through the flak vest he was wearing. Without slowing his movement through the slash he blocked in incoming blow from his left while spinning around into a donkey kick to push off of the rushing ninja from his right. The donkey kick met with enough force that he was able to body check the opponent he had blocked a second before and force him to the ground. As they fell the ninja attempted to grab Kyosuke's wrist in a lock, but Kyosuke reversed it and by the time they hit the ground Kyosuke was flipping forward to land with his feet on the ninja's face. The ninja rolled away just in time to avoid getting his head crushed by the surprising amount of force that Kyosuke was able to channel into his feet as he landed. Kyosuke sensed the ninja he had slashed with his kunai rushing in to reciprocate, so he crumpled at the knees into a roll and let his momentum carry him forward out of harm's way.

As he rolled he launched off of one hand into a handspring, twisting halfway around in the air so he was facing his opponents once again. By the time he had his feet on the ground he had caught the end of a sequence of hand-seals. Kyosuke couldn't have recited what they were, but he knew that the next attack was a water-based one, so he allowed his instincts to take over and performed a mid-level raiton-jutsu to counter it with barely a thought. The two jutsus collided before they even had time to fully manifest and destroyed one another. In the confusion, though, the enemy who had cast the mizu-jutsu missed the flying kunai coming through the ruins of the two attacks to lodge firmly in his forehead.

His deception now ruined by his use of the jutsu, Kyosuke dropped his henge and revealed himself to the two remaining ninja who were still registering the events of the previous ten seconds. Pressing his advantage, Kyosuke engaged them directly in a vicious hand to hand battle that the two attackers were clearly losing. Kyosuke feinted and countered their movements so well it seemed to them that he was reading their minds, yet none of his attacks were telegraphed or given away in the slightest. Eventually one of the attackers made the mistake of leaning into what he thought was a feint and Kyosuke's fist slammed into his solar plexus, driving the wind out of him momentarily. With one opponent gasping on the ground and him being able to concentrate fully on the other, Kyosuke unleashed a fury of punches and kicks against the ninja eventually toppling his balance and throwing him to the ground with one knee wrapped around his neck. As they landed, Kyosuke twisted his leg sharply and broke the ninja's neck.

He recovered to his feet almost immediately and sensed something wrong. His final opponent was not where he should have been—or rather, where Kyosuke had dropped him with the hit to his solar plexus. He turned towards the man, not fully understanding how he knew where to look, but knowing just the same. In a strange repeat of the previous night, the enemy ninja held Tayuya with an arm around her neck, threatening to break it. Before Kyosuke was able to conjure a clone like he had the last time, Tayuya used a complex twisting motion and what little body weight she had to pull the enemy off of his feet enough for her to escape his hold. She rolled out of the way towards her original hiding spot as Kyosuke moved to intercept the enemy trying to reacquire Tayuya.

"Get out of the way!" the assailant screamed as he fought off Kyosuke's assault. "You have nothing to do with this—she is a thief and will be punished!"

"I don't care--she's the only friend I have!" Kyosuke growled back. A sharp gasp behind him took his attention away for a split second that allowed a powerful blow from his opponent to connect and knock him down. Capitalizing on the break, the enemy ninja shot past Kyosuke into the hiding spot and put Tayuya in a stronger hold that she could not escape from.

"Like I said, this doesn't concern you, and she will be punished," the ninja said with a leer at his captive. "Thoroughly punished…"

Tayuya's eyes took on a light of fear, and even knowing her for only a day, Kyosuke knew that she did not scare easily. Her fear made him angry, and before he knew it he was moving with blinding speed towards the other ninja and had something in his hand. A sharp thrust forward and Kyosuke felt the object penetrating something soft and yielding. When he caught up to himself he found that he had grabbed the only weapon nearby—the ninjato he had left with Tayuya—and thrust it upwards into the ninja's head through the soft tissue at the base of his skull.

Tayuya released herself from the dead man's hold and stepped away as Kyosuke removed the blade and let the ninja fall to the ground.

Kyosuke looked down at the fallen ninja and then to the ninjato in his hand, bloodied from its use against the man who had threatened Tayuya. The buzzing in his head was starting to return, but it seemed to be lessened somehow.

'Like I'm redeeming it from some kind of sin—or maybe myself,' Kyosuke thought to himself before shaking his head. 'That's ridiculous—but still, it doesn't seem to hurt my head to hold it the way it did before…'

Breaking his train of thought, he looked to Tayuya, who had been studying him as he had entertained his internal monologue. She started to open her mouth to say something, but Kyosuke cut her off as he sheathed the blade and tossed it to her before his headache really flared up.

"You can make fun of me later. Right now we should get moving away from here—far away. Let's go," he stated authoritatively as he started to walk away from the battleground towards the edge of the roof.

"Actually," Tayuya spoke anyway, "I just wanted to say, um...thanks." Kyosuke stopped and turned back towards Tayuya giving her a strange look that earned him a glare in return. "Don't let it go to your head! I could have handled them without you, anyway...probably."

"That reminds me," Kyosuke said, recovering from her glare, "Those guys mentioned something about you not being able to use chakra, and you said something about it before. I'd like to know more about that since it looks like we'll be traveling together."

"Whatever," was Tayuya's clipped reply. "Before we get out of here we should probably stock up on some commodities," she said started to move back towards the open skylight.

"Commodities?" Kyosuke asked as he turned to follow her.

"Yeah," she called. "I'm about out of money and I know you don't have any, so if we're going somewhere we're going to need some things we can trade for supplies. I think I remember where Nobunaga's safe was."

Kyosuke made a face. "We're going to steal from the dead guy? Isn't that a little...I don't know..."

"No," Tayuya finished for him, "It's a lot. This guy was loaded, and besides, he doesn't need it where he's gone. We're broke and on the run, so we'll just take what we need to survive." 'Comfortably,' she added to herself.

Kyosuke shrugged and followed her down through the skylight and back into the library. As they walked Tayuya started grabbing artifacts and cradling them in one arm until they got to a large table where she set them down. Kyosuke stopped at the table and looked at her expectantly.

"Okay," she said, "You start putting these into one of those storage scrolls of yours and I'll be right back with some cash." She started to walk away and Kyosuke's eyes followed her.

"Will you need any help with the safe?" he called after her.

"No way, dingus! How do you think I could have made my living as a thief if a little safe would stop me?" she called back.

Kyosuke shrugged and removed one of his scrolls—the one with the paperwork in it, he thought—and set to work sealing the assorted artifacts into it. By the time he was finished, Tayuya had returned, but with conspicuously empty hands.

"What's wrong?" Kyosuke asked.

"The dumb safe has a chakra seal on it," she mumbled, irritated. "He must have installed it specifically to keep me from stealing from him. And I thought we had a good working relationship."

Kyosuke scrunched his brow in thought. "That begs the question, though: who opened it for him when he needed to get into it? Did he have a ninja working for him?"

Tayuya joined him in furrowing her brow, "I don't know. I never saw anyone else, but I suppose it's possible. I just can't see any ninja—nuke or otherwise—suborning themselves to him for any amount of money, no matter how desperate they were. I mean, what kind of self-respecting ninja would team up with a greasy criminal like him?"

This statement stirred a dim memory in Kyosuke—a shirtless, eyebrow-less man with his face wrapped in bandages with a companion dressed in a drab kimono and a mask and a short man dressed in a business suit on a bridge. Just that flash of memory and it was gone, all within a second. "I don't know," Kyosuke answered Tayuya, "but I don't think it would be the first time that has happened. Let's go see about this safe." Kyosuke grabbed the artifact laden scroll off the table and followed Tayuya into a much smaller room that looked more lounge. Behind a bookshelf (full of fake books—the deceased owner had apparently only tried for the appearance of intelligence) stood the door to the safe.

It looked pretty standard, with a combination dial and lever to open the latch. The only non-standard part of the safe was the large seal inscribed on the face of the door. Kyosuke moved up to it and stared at it for lengthy period of time before Tayuya interrupted his thoughts.

"So can you tell what it is?" she asked.

Kyosuke threw a grin over his shoulder, "Nope!" Tayuya's shoulders sagged as she sighed before Kyosuke spoke again. "Of course, I had no idea what the storage scroll seal was when I saw it for the first time...again...yesterday. But now I could reproduce it from memory with my eyes closed. So maybe I can figure this one out too," he finished hopefully.

After trying to decipher the language of the seal for a few more minutes he determined that he did not recognize even one of the symbols. With nothing else to do, he put his hands on the seal and started to mold chakra to his palms. He knew instantly that something was wrong.

In the blink of an eye he was no longer in the lounge room with Tayuya and he couldn't see his hands outstretched in front of him, much less any of his surroundings.

'Where am I?' he wondered. He took a step forward and heard a slosh at the same time he noticed his feet and knees were underwater. He looked down, but still couldn't see anything.

'I really wish I had some light,' he thought. As if summoned by his wish, some very dim lights came to life along the walls, which were revealed to be of brick, covered in mold and slime. "Yuck!" he said aloud. "Wherever that seal took me, I hope it doesn't take me long to get back. This place is disgusting." Nevertheless, he tread forward through the murky water along the lighted path. He could see other paths leading away from the lights, but decided it was best to stay on the one he was on.

Before long the narrow passage opened up into a gigantic chamber, with a tall set of gates on one side. The gates seemed to be in a state of disrepair, and the only thing holding them shut was a ragged looking piece of paper. He moved closer to inspect it.

'Seal,' he could barely read off the strip of paper. Just then a loud huff from beyond the gates startled him. He jumped back and squinted into the inky blackness in front of him. Without warning a giant red eye opened and focused on him. Kyosuke knew that he should be frightened by the apparently very large creature he had woken up with only a flimsy gate between it and him, but somehow fear was not the emotion that came forth. It was more like anger laced with need, but not quite. Regardless, Kyosuke simply stared back into the giant slit pupil that remained focused on him. He was not prepared, however, for the booming voice that issued forth from the cage.

"**Foolish human—just look at the mess you've made now. And to top it off you have woken me up needlessly. You don't even remember any of this, do you?"**

Kyosuke did nothing more than stare back into the creature's eye, not really able to respond, though he felt as though it was not really expecting him to, like it already knew the answer. He also felt the same strange thrumming of energy that he had felt before in the fight…

"**Enough,"** the creature sighed,** "I don't have time or energy to deal with you yet. I will call on you when I am ready. Do not disturb me again before then!"**

And just as suddenly as he had found himself in the inky blackness, he was back in the lounge staring at the ceiling with a slightly concerned Tayuya standing over him, nudging him with her foot.

"Are you dead?" she asked carefully.

Kyosuke blinked and groaned. "No, I don't think so."

Tayuya let out a nearly unnoticeable breath. "Good. Now what are we supposed to do with this?" she asked, gesturing to the now open safe. Instead of a safe full of money, the door had opened to reveal a staircase leading down to a sub-level of the mansion. Kyosuke sat up and looked into the cavernous opening with curiosity.

"How long was I out?" he asked.

"Not long. You just kind of collapsed after you touched the seal. You were out for a total of maybe two minutes."

Kyosuke thought for a moment before making up his mind. "Well, we should have a little time before the backup team shows up, so let's take a quick look," he declared as he started down the stairs behind the vault. After a slight hesitation, Tayuya followed him down underground. When they reached the bottom of the stairs Kyosuke tried to search for a light, but found none. Tayuya produced a small flashlight and shed some light onto the room.

Their first instinct was to turn around and forget about the safe and the strange room it protected.

The items housed in the basement of the mansion proved to be stranger than anything the man had kept upstairs. In fact, the disparity was so great that it caused them to reevaluate their entire theory regarding the safe. The entire room seemed to hum with hidden energy, so much so that Tayuya could feel it even lacking her chakra system. The strangest thing of all seemed to be in the middle of the room, and though it was only a few feet tall, its presence was much larger, as if it were actually the size of the house itself. The statue was extremely grotesque, with nine eyes and a horribly twisted face. The number of eyes was the most disturbing thing to Kyosuke, and for some reason made him think of the giant eye he had seen while he was unconscious.

While Kyosuke had been examining the statue, Tayuya had been looking around the rest of the chamber when her eyes fell on something that drew her stomach up into her throat. "Oh crap. Nobunaga, you stupid, fat, pea-brained, gluttonous, greedy, son-of-a-snake. Oi, I think we need to leave—now!"

Kyosuke turned and saw what she was looking at—a black robe with red clouds printed on it. Like the statue, it gave him a severe feeling of unease, but not for any clear reason. "Yeah, I think you're right. Let's get out of here."

They turned toward the exit when Tayuya's light caught on something else. "Hey, that's what we came for," she said moving over to pick up a large stack of Ryo notes. Kyosuke moved to her side to help her.

"Fine, let's grab it and go. I'm going to want some explanations when we're out of here, though."

Tayuya grunted her response before stuffing more wads of cash into her pockets and rushing up out of the chamber with Kyosuke close on her heels. Once outside they didn't stop running until they were at the port and had boarded the first boat to Tea Country.

III TKI III

Lying in their hammocks in the small quarters they had purchased on the cargo ship headed to Tea Country, Kyosuke truly relaxed for the first time since leaving the hotel where Tayuya had tried to kill him.

Tayuya still seemed on edge though. "So, explain to me again why we're going to Tea Country?" she asked.

"Well, the elemental countries seem kind of hot right now, and Tea Country only shares one border with the rest of the continent. It's pretty isolated so I figured things would be pretty quiet there. And anybody unfamiliar will stick out pretty obviously."

A short silence followed, then she said, "Wow, I'm impressed. It sounds like you put a lot of thought into this."

"Not really," he answered, "It was really more of a snap decision. I don't even know where all of that came from, but it seems like I know a lot about Tea Country for some reason and it seemed like a safe place to go."

"So we got on a boat to Tea Country on a whim of yours? A gut feeling?" Tayuya ground out, slightly annoyed.

"No, that's not what I said at all," he replied calmly. "I said I know a lot about the country and it seems like a safe place to go based on everything I know about it. I just didn't have to think about it at all, I just suddenly knew that's what needed to happen."

"Like with your ninja skills?" she asked.

"Yeah, a lot like that…" he trailed off as he answered. "That reminds me, I believe there are a couple things I wanted explained. First, what was up with that room behind the safe? I know what rubbed me wrong about it, what got you?"

Tayuya sighed. "You remember that black robe with the red clouds on it?" At Kyosuke's affirmative grunt, she continued. "That is the signature clothing of a criminal organization known as Akatsuki. They weren't really known until recently, but they started causing all kinds of trouble in Rain Country and they've got a pretty huge following there. Something about bringing peace to the world, but it seems like peace to them means killing everybody else. There are also rumors that they've been snatching up Jinchuuriki—nobody knows why, but it can't be good. And anyone capable of killing a jinchuuriki, much less capturing one, is someone worth being afraid of. I guess Nobunaga was involved with them somehow. My guess would be that those strange artifacts in there have something to do with the jinchuuriki. Anyway, we stole a bunch of cash from them, so I guess now we need to be on the lookout for those guys too."

"Their capturing Power of Human Sacrifice? I don't get it."

"Well, that's what it means, but someone called a jinchuuriki is a human container for one of the nine tailed demons," she explained.

'Nine demons,' he thought, 'I wonder if that has anything to do with that nine-eyed statue…'

"Okay," he said, "that explains that at least. Now, let's hear about your chakra system. I remember enough about it now that I should be able to follow you, so just talk and I'll ask questions when you're done."

Tayuya shifted uncomfortably. "Alright, it's not pretty and I ain't much of a story teller, so just listen, okay? I don't want to have to repeat myself, so pay attention." She was mildly satisfied to see him shift in his hammock and focused even harder on her. It even made her a little uncomfortable, especially under his dark blue eyes, but she continued anyway. "Okay, I don't remember much about being a kid, only that I was hungry most of the time and that I got beat up on a lot. I don't remember my family, so I guess I was either an orphan or a runaway. When I was ten I got caught stealing using ninjutsu by this freaky dude with oily black hair and a really pale face who said he was starting his own ninja village in the Rice Fields Country. He offered me food and shelter, two things which I never had much of, so I went with him. Later, I found out he was Orochimaru, a missing ninja from Konoha—not that I cared much at the time."

The sound of knuckles popping caused her to stop and glance at Kyosuke. His hands had tightened into fists. She looked up at Kyosuke's eyes and saw the anger burning in them. "Yeah, I kinda figured you didn't like him—don't worry, I'm not his biggest fan either. He gave me what he promised, but there were easily a hundred other kids competing for the food and the few beds there were. Then, after about half of us were gone he started the experiments. First we all got medical checkups and he made sure none of us were sick and probably made most of us healthier than we'd ever been. But then he started to take kids out one at a time each day. I didn't really know what was going on, but those kids came back with these weird marks on their shoulders, and they were really sick, but not normal sick. I remember the day the first kid who got the mark died—he'd been curled up in his bed for a week, and every once in a while the mark would spread across his whole body. Then the last day, the mark covered him until his skin turned black, and then the chakra just exploded out of him—I don't think there was enough of him left for even Orochimaru to try to figure out what happened. All I know is that after that we were given our own rooms—cells, really—and about a week after that I got my own mark."

Tayuya's voice had been subdued since she started the story, but Kyosuke could tell that whatever came next was something that really bothered her. "Ne, Tayuya—you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. At least now I know who one of my enemies was."

Tayuya chuckled. "You sap. Forget about it—it's just hard for me to forget how much it hurt. He came and got me one day and took me to this lab. It was really kind of embarrassing, but he gave me another medical checkup—I'd already decided he wasn't interested in girls, but it was still weird. Then just before I left, the freak BIT me! Oh that hurt, and it pissed me off! I turned around and I kicked him in his friggin' stretchy neck—right before I passed out. Anyway, as it turned out I was the only kid to survive from that 'batch'—that's what he called us, like we were freakin' cookies or something. Anyway, once he was sure I wasn't going to die he introduced me to some other kids who hadn't died getting the Curse Seal—that's what he called it—which was basically just an infusion of his chakra into our coils along with some other weird crap he didn't really explain. He did show us how to us the seals though and he taught us to fight and put us all together on a team, although we never really worked as one. The others were all pretty messed up too. There was Jirobou, who was this fat pig of a ninja from Earth Country. Had trouble minding his own business, but I guess for the most part he was alright I guess, even though we didn't get along. There was Sakon and Ukon who were actually twins, but shared the same body and could fuse with other people pull them apart from the inside. He was a creep. Then there was Kidoumaru. No kidding, this guy had six arms in addition to his two legs, and he acted like a freaking spider—could even shoot web out of his mouth. I hate spiders and I hated him. Last was Kimimaro, who was from the Kaguya clan in Water Country that got obliterated when they tried to overthrow the Mizukage. He was the last one of his clan and could do some really freaky crap with his bones—it always looked way painful, but he never showed any emotion. He wasn't around long though, he got sick pretty soon after that. Orochimaru had tagged him as his next body, so I guess that was another reason why he didn't do too many missions with us." Tayuya looked up at Kyosuke to make sure he was still listening, and he was—intently.

"So like I said none of us ever really got along all that great and we weren't really so much a team as just a bunch of kids with a lot of borrowed power. And Orochimaru used us for everything. Things actually went pretty well until he sent us to pick up that Uchiha brat." The sound of more popping knuckles drew Tayuya's eyes across the room again. "And that's where our paths crossed for the first time…" As she related the story of Sasuke's betrayal and Konoha's attempt to stop it, Kyosuke's anger faded into contemplation.

"And that's how it ended for me. I lay there trapped under an entire friggin' forest thanks to that freakin' Sand girl's stupid weasel summon. I guess at some point Orochimaru figured that I was going to die anyway so he overloaded my Curse Seal, which hurt like nothing I'd ever experienced before, by the way. The good news is that activating the seal healed my wounds, but the bad news is that it completely blew out my chakra circulatory system, which I'm pretty sure was supposed to kill me, but for some reason it didn't." Tayuya snorted, "He'd probably have yelled at me for failing to die correctly."

Kyosuke had sit up on his hammock at some point and now stared thoughtfully across the room at Tayuya. "Well, I'm glad you didn't anyway. Otherwise I'd be alone right now with no clue about anything," he said as he lay back down on his hammock. "Let's get some sleep—it's a long ride to Tea Country."

Tayuya lay on her side of the room, slightly dazed. 'That can't be right, I don't think anyone's ever said they were glad I was alive…' she thought as she drifted off.


	10. Waking Up

**A/N: **Huzzah! Another chapter has finally made it past all the red tape in my head. Um, thanks to those of you who are still around. Please let me know how you think this is going and I'll be glad to throw you a response and check out any stories you have going on. I am close to coming back to the US now, so you may be seeing more of me around here. Internet is becoming easier to get to, so hopefully that means more frequent updates from me. At least, I won't have the excuse that I don't have internet anymore. Anyway, without further ado, here is the latest installment of The Kougu Identity. This chapter will conclude what I feel is "Part 1" of the story. Please enjoy.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto. Shucks and other comments.

* * *

Heavy eyelids slid open to find the pre-dawn light barely illuminating the surrounding area. She could hear seagulls nearby and the crashing of waves against a reef somewhere further out. Instinctively, she knew not to move so as not to aggravate her injury, but finally decided that the pain might be worth finding out exactly where she was. Hinata was surprised when she attempted to sit up, and her back did not erupt in searing pain from the blade wound she knew she had suffered. Thinking over the possibilities for this development, she continued to get up and move around to try and get her bearings.

'Where am I?' she wondered to herself. 'Our last mission was near the sea, so perhaps I'm not too far away. If I can get my bearings I should be able to find Naruto without too much trouble. I feel like something terrible has happened to him…'

The last thing she remembered was striking a jyuuken blow to Sasuke's back, hopefully paralyzing him. 'Maybe Naruto won the fight and he brought us here,' she thought absently. Then another thought struck her. If she had lost consciousness and Naruto had brought her here, then he would know who she really was. 'What would that do to him?'

She had started out in what seemed to be a bedroom on the second floor of a house. She had managed to find her way to the staircase and started down when a voice from behind froze her in her tracks.

"Hinata-chan?" the voice inquired.

It was a voice that Hinata hadn't heard in what felt like a lifetime. She slowly turned towards the voice and confirmed her hopes.

"Sensei!" Hinata shouted as she ran to her old teacher, who opened her arms in welcome. Hinata sobbed as they embraced each other in reunion, before Hinata's legs failed her and she put her full weight on the taller woman.

"Hinata-chan, we were so worried," Kurenai said as she stroked the younger woman's back and held her tightly. It brought back memories of an earlier time when Hinata had needed comfort over lesser issues. If only things had stayed as simple as worrying about the acceptance of a father, or a crush on the village pariah.

They stayed like that for several minutes until the other members of the household arrived. Hinata, still distraught, was unable to lift herself off the floor and had to be carried by Tsunade downstairs to the living room. Tsunami and Inari moved to the kitchen to start making food while the ninja inhabited the sitting room. Tazuna was still nursing his hangover from the previous night, so he immediately went outside, saying something about "a hair of the dog," or some such thing—nobody paid much attention to him anyway. Tetsuo and Souda had left the day before, unable to neglect their home and their trade for any longer.

When everyone was settled in the living room, and Hinata had calmed down a bit, Tsunade initiated the discussion without preamble.

"What the hell is going on?"

Hinata, now used to being put on the spot without warning, immediately started to answer. "Tsunade-sama, the day of Sakura-san's memorial I went looking for Naruto-kun because he was not there. I went to his apartment and found him speaking with someone I didn't recognize. I didn't catch much of their talk, just that the strange ninja invited Naruto to follow him. They left, Naruto trailing the other, and I followed Naruto. He noticed me and tried to warn me off, but I was worried about him so I stayed. When he and the other ninja dropped into the forest, I tried to follow but they were gone. I was attacked and when I woke up Danzo was there…"

"Danzo?" Tsunade interrupted. "What did he do?"

"He talked to me," Hinata answered. "He made me an offer. He told me that Naruto was going to work for him now, and that I could help him." Hinata explained the details of the deal she had struck with Danzo and described the breaking process that she assisted in.

Tsunade worried one of her fingernails. "Of course, if you had refused he would have killed you and used your image anyway."

Hinata nodded, but said, "I thought that, but he never made any mention of it. The only things he spoke of were of how joining Naruto would be beneficial to me, not of the consequences of refusing."

"Yes, that sounds just like him to tell only the part of the truth that is convenient to him," Tsunade affirmed. "What happened next?"

Hinata related her part in Naruto's training and told her of the missions that they had been assigned. When she named their targets Tsunade interrupted.

"Do you remember the dates of the assassinations?" she asked.

Hinata nodded an affirmative, "Yes, I still have all of the records from our last few. We made pre-scheduled drops to exchange target information. If my traveling pouch was with me it should be in one of the scrolls." Kakashi, who had been listening quietly against a wall (sans orange book), left to retrieve the girl's pouch.

"Hinata," Tsunade spoke softly, "I am so glad that you are back. This information is extremely valuable to us, and of course it's the first news we've had of Naruto for so long." Hinata nodded, staring down at her knees. "Naruto is not the only one who was missed, however. Your family has been terribly affected by your disappearance as well."

Hinata let out an uncharacteristic laugh of disbelief. "I doubt the Hyuuga council has been all that concerned—it solved all of their problems when I disappeared, I'm sure."

"No Hinata, not the Hyuuga clan, your family," Tsunade tried again. Hinata looked somewhat confused so Tsunade explained further. "I know that things between you and your father and your sister were not very well at the time you left, but your absence has brought out a part of your father that many have not seen since before your mother died. He feels terribly about how he treated you, and thinks that it's his fault you left. Your sister, of course, always adored you and misses you terribly. It will be a good day when you finally return."

Hinata shook her head. "I wish I could believe you Tsunade-sama, but there is too much in the past for me to accept your words so easily."

Tsunade nodded understandingly as Kakashi brought the sought after pouch to her. She handed it to Hinata, who quickly produced a sealing scroll and removed from it a stack of file folders, which she handed to Tsunade. Tsunade looked through them for a few moments before setting them back on the table and sighing heavily.

"Well, at least this explains a lot. Every single one of these hits was a target of planned ANBU surveillance, and in each case the surveillance was to begin within a week of the times that you and Naruto accomplished your missions. ROOT has been stealing our information and using it to preempt our operations. Every one of these targets was scheduled for interrogation and then execution, hopefully revealing information that would lead closer to our real targets, the Akatsuki and Orochimaru. But ROOT severed the chain of information, cutting us off from all avenues of approach." Tsunade sighed and dropped hear head into one of her hands. "Just one more way Danzo has succeeded in subverting my powers as Hokage."

Inari chose that moment to enter the room and announce that breakfast was ready, providing a much needed distraction. They all moved into the kitchen, where Tsunami had laid out a large breakfast of miso, rice, and fish. There were also assorted fruits that would not have been found in Wave country only a few years earlier, but now thanks to the bridge and their open trade routes, they were readily available. Another mark of Naruto's lasting effect on the country.

Hinata, not having eaten in days, however, was oblivious of this fact as she threw her childhood manners to the wind and began to eat voraciously after a hasty, "Itadakimasu!"

Nobody was offended, given the circumstances and they simply followed her lead and tucked into the large meal. Just as Hinata started to slow her pace, Inari lost his patience.

"Nee-chan, where is Naruto-nii-san?"

His simple question had the effect of stopping the entire party mid-bite. Hinata finished the bite in her mouth and looked away for a moment, giving everybody the opportunity to do the same as she gathered herself.

"First," she started, "I want to thank you for your care and hospitality. I don't know who you are, but I've guessed that you know Naruto, and that thanks to you Tsunade-sama, Kurenai-sensei, and Kakashi-sensei are here. For that, arigatou-gozaimasu." She gave a small bow in her chair and continued.

"Naruto and I had been assigned an interrogation and execution in Water Country. The target was a spymaster from one of the other major villages, but we weren't sure which one. We had reliable intelligence that he would be meeting with some unknown nuke-nins after moonset. Naruto infiltrated the village the day before and scouted the town—he never got the mission details until the last second, which was his idea, actually—to learn its layout and routes." She paused to take a sip of water. "He left our hotel room as planned and I stayed behind to wait for him to come back with the target for interrogation. Something went wrong, though, and suddenly his chakra flared up. He never used chakra unless he had to—most of the time he was able to get by with just using stealth and surprise."

Kakashi's visible eye widened at hearing that. 'Only top-level ANBU assassins are ever able to operate completely without chakra,' he thought. 'There was a time when I was able to, and Itachi was able to from the time he joined, but I never thought Naruto would reach that level.'

Kurenai, seeing his expression, couldn't help but interrupt. "Oh, come on Kakashi. Don't act so surprised. His abilities in stealth were impressive even before he was a genin, and you've said yourself that he had unlimited potential. It's just too bad that it took this for him to realize it."

Kakashi schooled his features and merely let out a "hmmmm."

Hinata continued, "When I found him he had transformed into his four-tailed state and he was engaged in a blade duel with Sasuke." This statement brought gasps from the three ninja in the room, and looks of confusion from the two civilians.

"How is that possible?" Tsunade asked. "You must mean that Sasuke was fighting the Kyuubi-Naruto."

Hinata shook her head, "No, Danzo had trained Naruto's emotional response so that Naruto could remain conscious and in control through the five-tailed state."

"That is…" Kakashi started, but was unable to finish.

"Terrifying?" Hinata supplied. "Yes, it was truly terrifying. Watching him fight Sasuke though, it was wonderful. He probably did not need my help, but I couldn't help but want to get involved, to help him achieve his vengeance on the one that had betrayed him. Sasuke attacked in tandem with a bunshin and I knew right away which one was the fake while Naruto took an instant to discern between them. I attacked and disabled Sasuke's nervous system, but he managed to cut me across the back, and after that I lost consciousness. I barely remember waking up in what seemed like a boat a couple of times, and I think I had Naruto's hitai-ate with me."

Kakashi reached into his shuriken pouch and provided the item to Hinata. She nodded thankfully and took it reverently before looking confidently back at Tsunade. "I know I disabled Sasuke, and when I woke I had hoped that Naruto had beaten him and brought us here. But I realized that the henge that I wore must have dropped when I lost consciousness. I don't know what that would have done to Naruto—I'm scared that he might have lost all control. He might have gone beyond his ability to hold onto himself. Tsunade-sama, we have to find him—we have to make sure he's okay!"

Tsunade worried a fingernail. "Hinata," she started, "you know that I, more than just about anyone but you, would do anything to find Naruto. And I promise that we will, but right now we are not equipped to take on such a mission, and I have the whole village to think about. I've already been gone for far too long, and who knows what Danzo has done in my absence. We need to head back to the village for now, but I promise that we will do everything we can to find him. For right now, we just need to have faith in him, that he's doing alright, just like he always manages somehow."

Hinata's eyes shone with tears, but she nodded. Her year with Naruto in ROOT had instilled in her a lot of battle sense, and she knew that Tsunade spoke the truth. This was not the battle that needed to be fought in order to win the war, and they had to be cautious in how they proceeded.

'Naruto always does manage, somehow,' she thought. And that brought a weak smile to her face. She nodded in determination to Tsunade, who smiled back. "When do we leave?" she asked.

"Well, your wound should be healed fully by now," Tsunade told her. "I was able to remove all traces of the poison and to heal the wound, but unfortunately it will leave a nasty scar."

Hinata lowered her eyes and nodded, but Kurenai leaned in and whispered to her before she could get too upset. "Don't worry—knowing Naruto, he'll probably think it's cool." This made Hinata grin a bit.

"Before we head back, though," Tsunade continued, "we'll need to disguise you. No one can know that you have returned to the village, or else it will give us away to Danzo. When we get back, my first order of business will be to form a special, secret task force specifically for finding Naruto and combating ROOT." Tsunade closed her eyes deliberatively for a moment before fixing Hinata with a piercing stare. "Hinata, I want you on that team as its chief advisor and tactician. I need someone who knows how ROOT operates to advise the team leader. And your familiarity with Naruto and his modus operandi will help in tracking him. Will you be able to handle such an assignment? Do you think you would be able to work with that team, knowing that you will be exposed to people you used to know, but that you can't acknowledge?"

Hinata looked serious, considering the challenges of the assignment, and then met Tsunade's eyes and answered with a firm nod of her head and a steady, stutter-less, "Hai, Tsunade-sama!"

Tsunade grinned affectionately at the pale-eyed girl and said, "Good. Now let's finish our breakfast before it freezes. I'm afraid we've already let it get cold."

Everyone chuckled a bit before digging in to the remaining food, all feeling much better about the situation—even if the non-ninja participants were slightly confused by some of the conversation.

When the ninja finished packing to leave, Tsunami fussed about each of them making sure nothing was forgotten or left behind, in addition to trying to sneak little gifts of appreciation into each of their belongings. The ninja noticed, naturally, when their belongings seemed a bit bulkier than they had been on the trip out, but politely accepted the gifts without too much fuss. Clearly Tsunami still felt her family owed the ninja village and was trying to preserve some of her family's honor.

Grateful hands were shaken and tearful embraces were exchanged with the bridge-builder's family as the Konoha ninja departed the house. A particularly fond farewell was given to Kakashi, already being a friend of the family, and a promise was extracted from the ninja to visit again soon.

Inari led the party of four back to the speed-boat and sped them off to the mainland shore, trying much harder this time to deliver a smooth ride (for fear of the Hokage's wrath). More handshakes and farewells were exchanged with Inari as the boat loitered near the shore for the ninja to disembark.

As Hinata exited the boat, Inari stopped her for a bit longer than he had the other three ninja. "Nee-chan," he started, "I know that Naruto-nii-san is strong and I have a lot of faith in him, but I'm worried for him. It sounds like he might be in a lot of trouble. Please bring him back, nee-chan. He means a lot to us too, and if there's anything we can do to help I hope you'll let us know."

Hinata nodded. "I promise, Inari, I will bring Naruto back. He'll come home again—I'll make sure of it."

Satisfied, Inari started the boat again. "Good. And make sure he visits us more!" he added with a grin, before he took off across the channel.

With Inari gone, Hinata turned to the others and they started moving through the forest back towards Konoha. It had already been discussed that an ANBU team would meet them half way and provide Hinata with her disguise, and incidentally her new uniform. The cover story would be that a single ANBU operative had required extraction from a highly sensitive location and due to the extreme secrecy of the mission the Hokage herself had gone to ensure the extraction was successful. Details would be short, and properly circumspect. Nobody outside Kakashi, Kurenai, Shizune, and Tsunade would be aware of the mission's true purpose or the identity of the ANBU operative being retrieved. And hopefully it would stay that way.

III TKI III

Danzo was perturbed. To anyone that didn't know him, this might have sounded like a fairly minor situation, but Danzo's emotional balance was usually so controlled that a small thing like being perturbed usually intimated a large amount of frustration.

As a result, people who knew him stayed well out of his way.

'This,' he thought to himself, 'could present a serious issue.' He was currently limping through the halls of the Hokage tower after requesting a meeting with the current—and to his mind, supernumerary—Hokage. His perturbation lie in part with his request being turned down, due to the fact that Tsunade was apparently engaged in some "out of the village business."

It was his business (and his right, to his way of thinking) to know the Hokage's activities and whereabouts. The fact that he had no knowledge of the Hokage's departure from Konoha (and subsequent three-day absence) was disturbing to him, to say the least.

His frustration was also due to the fact that Ninku and Rei had not reported in after their last mission. His operatives were moving towards the location of their last assignment, but he would not receive their report until the next day.

The fact that the Hokage had left the village the day after Ninku's last hit was to take place was not lost on him. He didn't like coincidences, because in his world there was no such thing as a simple coincidence—when two events appeared to be related, it usually turned out that they were. It was just a matter finding out how.

Unfortunately, there were many possibilities that might explain the current string of events, and none of them favored him and his agenda. One common thread ran among them, and that was that somehow Tsunade knew something he did not. He would have to redouble his efforts on the surveillance of the fake Hokage.

After all, the leader of a village should be aware of everything that transpires under his command, even if the ones under his command weren't consciously aware of it.

III TKI III

Tayuya and Kyosuke exited the ship after two days at sea, finally arriving in Tea Country. While on board, Kyosuke had retrieved his supply of hair dye and the stack of clothing that he kept in its sealed scroll. In the confines of their cabin, he and Tayuya had changed their appearances significantly enough that anyone who had spotted them in Water Country would be hard pressed to recognize them now.

Kyosuke had changed his hair color to a light brown color and covered the scar-like marks on his cheeks with a bit of stage makeup. He had not been able to discern the origin of the cleft marks on his face, and they didn't look so much like scars as they were simply depressed lines in his face. The fact that they were so regular seemed to rule out any kind of battle related injury, so they were either some kind of birth mark or a ritualistic marking made close after birth. Somehow, that possibility didn't seem right either.

Tayuya had dyed her hair from its electric red color to a dull shade of orange, toning her appearance down somewhat, but still managing to come across as strong willed and tough looking. Both had donned the clothing that Kyosuke deemed appropriate for the region they were entering. As they exited the ship, no one gave them a second glance. They had boarded late at night and covered in cloaks and hoods, so the first time any of the crew of the ship actually saw them was in Tea Country. No one seemed to care.

"The first thing to do is get out of here and make our way inland. We need to spend a day or so figuring out some of the common local trades and dialect so we can settle in a small village with a believable back-story," Kyosuke whispered to Tayuya as they walked through a busy market. "Do you have any civilian skills that you might be able to adapt to this country?"

Tayuya thought a moment before answering. "Well, out of necessity I learned how to sew and repair clothes. We had to provide for ourselves back in Sound, which was why nobody ever had any regular sort of uniforms, just the same drab cloth."

Kyosuke nodded as he steered them onto another street. "Good, that's a start. Why don't you look around some of the clothing and textile shops for a few hours and get a feel for the local fashion. No doubt it'll be a bit fancier than what we'd find deeper inland, but that could work to our advantage."

Tayuya just stared at Kyosuke for a bit. "How do you know all of this? Where do you get this stuff?"

"I don't know," he answered. "It's like with fighting, I don't really have anything concrete that I'm basing this on, it just sort of comes to me. Like an instinct."

"This is nuts," Tayuya grumbled.

"Yeah, you're telling me."

"So what are you going to be doing? Copulating with yourself?" Tayuya couldn't resist throwing an insult—she was well overdue.

"I'm not sure yet," Kyosuke said thoughtfully, "but I need to find a trade for myself as well. I'll just look around a bit and see what looks good." He paused for a moment as they made their way through a fairly large crowd. "One more thing: I really need you to try and tone down your language and your abrasiveness." Tayuya started to protest, but Kyosuke cut her off. "It doesn't really matter to me personally, but the way that you talk, the things you say, and the way you carry yourself does not fit with the roles we are trying to play."

"And what roles are we trying to play?" Tayuya asked acidly.

Kyosuke answered, but slightly uncomfortably, "The easiest ones for two people who don't really know each other to use—a newly married couple."

"WHAT?!" Tayuya shouted, drawing the attention of several people nearby. Kyosuke moved Tayuya quickly down the street to a quieter area.

"Are you some kind of pervert or something?" Tayuya asked in a low, fierce whisper. "`Cause if you are, I am out of here right now!"

Kyosuke counted to ten while staring straight at Tayuya. This gave her a moment to cool down and for him to collect his thoughts. "No, I am not a pervert. There is nothing more involved in this type of cover than the _outward appearance_ of being married, so relax. It's a pretty easy one to do, but we have to be a lot more low key than we are right now, understand?"

Tayuya had set her jaw, but finally she relented. "Fine. I'll try and act more like a newly married woman. But don't expect me to get all mushy and hold your hand and crap in public," she stated firmly.

"I wouldn't dream of it," Kyosuke replied soothingly. "Out here most marriages are likely to be arranged and as newly weds we probably wouldn't know each other very well anyway. If you look around, you'll notice it's mostly the older couples who act more familiar with each other."

Tayuya took a moment to watch the people passing through the market and saw that Kyosuke was indeed correct. "Kyosuke, you're scary good at this. I don't know what happened between when we first met and now, but you turned out to be a pretty good ninja."

Kyosuke grinned tightly. "Thanks. Hopefully someday I'll know what happened and maybe I'll be able to tell you."

They spent a minute more watching the crowd and discussing their objectives for the rest of the day. An appropriate amount of money was taken out of Kyosuke's scroll and divided between them. They set their meeting place and then went their separate ways, keeping their ears open for the other's emergency signal if anything happened to go wrong.


	11. Trying to Live

**A/N: **Okay, so I'm improving...at least on the frequency of my updates. The quality of the writing is up for debate, but I'm pretty happy with it. One thing I would like to defuse before it gets pointed out is that Naruto and Tayuya's speech is very different from their norm, mostly because of the situation they're in. For reference, see the last section of the previous chapter where Naruto explains their plan, and that should explain pretty well. Even so, please let me know what you think--I really hammered this one out pretty quickly (in relative terms) so there wasn't as much deliberation on this as there usually is. I hope you enjoy it. Also, I am stateside again--huzzah!

* * *

Tayuya woke to the sounds of life getting started in the small village in Tea Country that she and Kyo had settled in nearly a three weeks ago. It seemed impossible that her life could have changed so drastically in a month, but by now she was no longer amazed or surprised about anything that involved Kyo.

After their initial arrival in Tea Country, Tayuya and Kyosuke had spent a couple of days learning the local customs and trades as he had outlined when they arrived. When Tayuya felt like she had a pretty good feel for her new trade as a seamstress, and the appropriate demeanor to match, Kyosuke had moved them out into the countryside to wander for a bit. They had traveled between several of the small villages learning more about rural life in Tea Country so they could eventually go to ground somewhere. After about a week they found a suitably small and out of the way village to settle in. Surprisingly, she had managed to fit the role of blushing newlywed pretty well. This, of course, was helped by Kyosuke's command performance as a new husband—properly doting and concerned for his new bride's well being and comfort.

'Kyosuke,' Tayuya thought, 'is so good at what he does that I doubt he even realizes he's doing it half the time.' Oddly, the thought both depressed and delighted her. On one hand, Kyosuke's act stirred feelings in her that she wasn't sure she had a name for, as she had never experienced them before. On the other hand though, knowing it was all an act was somewhat disappointing.

'It would be nice, I guess, if someone actually did feel that way about me,' Tayuya thought morosely. 'But, I guess I'll just have to enjoy the imitation while it lasts.' Tayuya never dwelt long on unpleasantness, mainly because she had had so much of it in her life already.

Kyosuke had managed to find his niche in metalworking, of all things. He had spent some of his money on various works of metal in the seaside market and decided that with some practice he might be able to make comparable products. As usual, his modesty was nothing short of ridiculousness, and after about a week of practice his work was on par with the better metalworkers in the country (that they had explored anyway). In fact, he actually worried that he might make a name for himself and draw attention, and so started to design flaws into his workmanship in order to degrade the quality of his products. Such a skill required yet more affinity with his craft, and it was no surprise to Tayuya when he successfully accomplished that goal too.

'It's like there's nothing he can't do,' she thought as she went about her morning rituals. Her dyed hair was now combed out of its thick tangles that she used to keep it in and she found herself with a lot of very fine orange hairs that had to be put up in a bun every morning. Having never had to do this before, it had taken some practice before she was able to properly put her hair up. Some of the other women in their village (it was so small that the people didn't even bother with a name, they just called it "The Village") had helped and given her a lot of advice on womanly topics. Some of the advice was definitely not needed, or really wanted for that matter, but since she was impersonating a newlywed, it would not have done to express that sentiment.

When they had moved in Kyosuke and Tayuya had shortened their names to 'Kyo' and 'Taya,' in keeping with the customs of the rural in-land communities. There were no family names, and that suited Taya just fine. The village they lived in was small and allowed them their fair share of privacy. Privacy was good for them, and not for the usual reasons.

Over the last month they had been making preparations. While they hoped that this reprieve would last a long while, they were under no illusions that they would not eventually be found or recognized by someone. So they prepared.

Kyo spent any time not spent in his shop out in the forest trying to re-awaken some of his ninja skills. He sought out dangerous predators and put himself in harm's way in order to dredge his battle skills to the surface of his mind. It seemed to be working. He could now call on a number of his techniques at will. Taya helped him to try and name them so that they would be able to talk about them without having to describe them each time. She knew, of course, what the Bunshin, Kage Bunshin, and Henge were, along with a few others. The rest they made up names for, but even then they were getting hard-pressed to name his seemingly bottomless well of techniques.

She had once joked that he must be related to the Copy-nin Kakashi with all of the jutsus he knew. Naruto had reacted very strangely to the name 'Kakashi' and that had actually led to jogging some memories out of Tayuya. They had been getting ready to sleep (in separate futons on opposite sides of a shoji screen) while discussing his progress for the day…

_Tayuya suddenly got excited. "Hey, wait a minute. When we went to grab that Uchiha bastard the Copy-nin was talking to him right before we showed up. He might have been the Uchiha's teacher! And you and your friends fought so hard to get that jerk back that you must have been close to him…maybe you were even on that kid's team! And if you were on his team, and Kakashi was his teacher, that would mean that Kakashi was your teacher too, right?"_

_Kyosuke didn't seem convinced. "I don't know Tayuya, it seems pretty thin. You say this Kakashi guy had the—what was it? The Sharingan? Anyway, that's probably why he was talking to Sasuke, since according to you the Sharingan is an Uchiha bloodline. I doubt they would make such a legendary ninja a simple teacher. He was probably giving Sasuke a special lesson in his bloodline or something." _

Tayuya had continued to fill him in on major events and people—apparently he had been paying attention and absorbing everything she told him. When she really thought about it, she realized that she could tell him pretty much anything and he would believe it. That kind of power was almost scary, and the way Kyosuke was turning out, it would be like total control over a weapon of mass destruction. She couldn't do that to him though—somehow he was just too earnest and kind to try and manipulate like that.

'And since when did I turn sentimental?' Tayuya thought to herself as she finished getting dressed. Kyo was already gone, of course, out into the woods to do his morning workout. He would open the shop for business in about an hour and then they would both get to work on fixing the various metal goods and clothes of the village that required mending that day.

Taya moved to the dining area in their small house (which had been built by Kyo over the course of a few days with the help of several clones that he had henged to look like various people they had met while traveling the countryside. Apparently, he had a photographic memory now, too…). She stirred the ashes in the fire pit and added some fuel to start building the fire up to heat the water. The wooden tub with the leftover rice from the day before was close by and she opened it to start preparing some onigiri for breakfast. When the water started to heat up she retrieved the miso paste from a small cabinet Kyo had purchased from the village carpenter as part of his plan to generate good will between the various merchants in the village. Taya finished preparing the miso and rice just in time for Kyo to return from his workout.

As Kyo walked in the door he brought with him a breeze of the cool, sweet air of the unpolluted rural country that they lived in. She was surprised the first few times after he returned from his workout that he did not stink of sweat and body odor. Eventually, when she worked up the courage, she had watched him go through his workout and then retire to a waterfall somewhere deeper in the woods to shower off. She had even seen him stop the water from flowing with just his chakra, and had decided then and there that she didn't need to spy on him anymore.

"G'morning, Taya-chan," Kyo said brightly as he came in the door, clad in his usual loose hakama-style pants and t-shirt.

"Morning, Kyo-kun," Tayuya beamed as she greeted him. This was the act—although as time went on, Tayuya was finding it easier and easier to call him by the familiar name. "How are you this morning?"

"Meh, same as usual Taya-chan. It was a good workout, but nothing new today," he replied as he sat down. Kyo rarely bragged about things, but he had noted that lately it was getting harder and harder to find the kind of dangerous predators to square off against that jogged his survival instinct. He had been very careful in his encounters to avoid killing the animals (most of the time), but inevitably they decided that the competition was too great in this area and must have moved on. Incidentally, the local farmers and livestock breeders were noticing a severe drop in the disappearance of their animals.

"In any case," he continued, "I think my combat skills are about as far as I can get them without actual combat or some serious instruction. I've been thinking more and more about the seals on my scrolls and something is bothering me about them." Kyo paused to take the bowl of miso and plate of onigiri Taya offered him.

"Bothering you how?" Taya asked.

"Well," he started, "maybe not so much bothering me as it is kind of an itch. Like there's something there that I need to look into. It's kind of that feeling when you're trying to think of something and it's right on the tip of your tongue but you just can't grasp it."

Taya nodded. "Sounds like it would be worth checking out," she agreed. "I don't remember a whole lot about them, but I can try and show you what I do remember." Kyo nodded as he and Taya paused in their discussion to eat a bit. Suddenly Taya looked up at Kyo with an urgent look on her face.

"Whu?" He asked with his mouth full.

"You don't remember hand seals, do you? You use them in your jutsus, but you don't know the actual separate hand seals," she explained. "Again, I don't remember all the particulars, but since the snake-teme was trying to create his own jutsus he was always talking about them. I should be able to remember enough to give you a little head start, and maybe it'll be enough to jog your memory. You probably knew all about it before whatever happened to you happened." Taya somewhat enjoyed helping Kyo try to recover his memories—it was almost like game. Besides that, in their current situation it was about all she could do anyway. They shared the household chores and each had half of the business that they shared, but she knew that in terms of survival most of the burden lay on Kyo's shoulders.

"That's a good point," Kyo agreed after a moment of thought. "When I remember a jutsu the hand seals kind of come as a blur—or not at all if I can do the jutsu without them. If I knew more about how they worked I might be able to remember more jutsus, or even make my own. Thanks Taya-chan! You're a huge help," he grinned at her from ear to ear.

"Yeah, whatever," she said, but inwardly was pleased at his praise. 'Are most people like this and I just spent most of my life with the wrong people, or is Kyo just some sort of crazy exception to the rule?' she wondered.

Kyo and Taya finished the rest of their breakfast in companionable silence, each hoping that it would be just another quiet day.

When they finished, Kyo and Taya cleared their eating area and washed everything in the wash basin in the corner, which was fed by a hand pump that pulled water from the nearby stream. Kyo rinsed and washed the dishes and Taya dried and put them away. To any outside observer it would have looked like the very picture of domestic tranquility, and in all honesty it was as close a facsimile as they could make it without actually being married. Taya had already come to terms with this fact, and Kyo was starting to see through his act and realize that he was slowly moving away from putting on a show towards just being content with his current lifestyle.

'This isn't so bad,' he thought as he handed Taya the last of the dishes. 'I think I could really live like this, someday. Hopefully once I get my memories back I can go back to my home and just live like this.' Taya turned around and grinned at him after putting the last dish away. 'Hopefully.'

III TKI III

Kyo always made sure to open his shop at the same time as his fellow shop owners in the village. The flow of life in the village was predictable enough that one could count on local business for about the first two hours of the day before the travelers from the nearest large town started making their way through the village. In this way if one of the people in the town needed help it would almost certainly be given before the visitors arrived, and everyone then stood a fair chance of doing the maximum amount of business that day. The economy of the village was fairly simple, and it all rested on one shared axiom: what's good for one business is good for all the businesses, and when all the businesses do well each individual can expect to do well. Essentially, everybody worked together to make things better.

It was idyllic, but Kyo knew it could never function in a larger environment, since there would be too much competition. In the village, there was only one tradesman per craft.

Kyo opened the large double doors to his metalworking shop and helped Taya set up her cart and stand with all of her sewing and mending materials. She worked outside so that her cloth goods would not be endangered by the hot metal that Kyo worked with. Once she was set up and started to work on one of the mending jobs to be completed from the previous day, Kyo went back into his shop and started on getting himself ready for business.

First, he moved to the furnace and bellows and heated the remaining coals from the previous day. They had been burning all night and doubled as the main heat source for the house, their bedroom being just on the other side of the wall from the shop. By the time evening set in the coals were cooling and maintained a very comfortable temperature in the living space. Taya had been impressed by Kyo's ingenuity, but he insisted that it was not anything special, that all metalworkers had their homes set up that way.

As he heated the coals Kyo added more, little by little, to ensure that he would have steady heat in the furnace all day. He went about intermittently setting up his tools and working areas and returning to bellows periodically to make sure the new coals caught and burned steadily. Eventually his shop was ready for work and he picked up a project that was left over from the previous day: a sickle that had been broken on a rock while one of the farmers in the village had been reaping his crops. Kyo had re-forged the blade the day before and let the metal cure overnight in a tub of cold oil to harden the steel. On this morning he put his grinding wheel into motion and got to work sharpening the oiled blade to a fine edge, moving from the grinding wheel to a whetstone, then to a polishing stone, and finally using a leather strap to strip off any remaining metal burrs on the edge.

During his work a few neighbors had dropped by to say hello, and to request some work to be done.

"Ohayo Kyo-san! I hope you are well today. Would you be able to sharpen my cleaver? It's been too long and I can barely make the cut all the way through my meats."

"Of course, Kenichiro-san. I would be happy to, just as soon as I finish with this."

"Good morning, Kyo-kun, might I ask you a favor? I'm afraid Toshiro and I dented our favorite baking pan, could you straighten it back out?"

"Certainly, Mai-san. I hope little Jirou-chan is feeling better."

And such was the morning routine. Kyo finished his work on the sickle and returned it to its owner, happily accepting some fresh fruits and vegetables in trade for his effort. The cleaver was sharpened and the baking pan restored to its original shape. All in a day's work for the village's lone metalworker. The village had been very happy to have him settle there, since before it had taken a day's walk to the next town to have anything of that nature repaired. The metalworker there was glad for the reprieve as well, since he had work from his own village to cover as well as the traveling customers he dealt with. In fact, it had been him who had pointed Kyo and Taya in the direction of their village in the first place.

While Kyo was busy with his own tasks, Taya finished mending the dress that had been brought to her the day before and returned it to its owner. When she returned to her cart she found a young woman by the name of Yura waiting for her. Yura was about Taya's age and not yet married, so Yura always asked Taya questions about married life (sometimes embarrassing ones that Taya didn't properly have answers for). As Taya got closer she could see that Yura was nearly shaking with nervous energy.

"Ohayo Yura-chan! What can I help you with?" Taya inquired pleasantly. In spite of Yura's inquisitiveness, Taya considered her one of her closest friends in the village.

"Oh Taya-chan, I have wonderful news! Shiro-kun and I are going to be married!" Yura nearly shouted.

Taya's face split into a genuine smile. "Oh Yura, that's wonderful news. Congratulations!" Taya had found that on the whole Kyo's initial assessment had been correct: most marriages were arranged and bride and groom rarely knew each other before wedding. She knew that in Yura's case, however, that Yura and her betrothed had known each other since they were children and were very much in love with one another. A very fortunate arrangement, to be sure.

"Thank you, Taya-chan. I know that traditionally the mother of the bride usually takes care of the wedding kimono, but in my case, my mother cannot." Taya nodded. She knew that a terrible sickness during the previous winter had left Yura's mother bedridden. "I have no sisters either," Yura continued, "but I can not think of anyone that I would consider to be more of a sister to me than you, Taya-chan. Would you be willing to make my wedding kimono?"

Taya was taken aback by the request. "Oh, I'm not sure, Yura-chan. I'm flattered of course, but that might be a bit out of my league. I can sew, but I'm not sure I could make you a kimono worthy of your wedding celebration." 'Crap! I can't do something that big, I'm nowhere near that skilled…'

Yura looked disappointed, but not deterred. "Taya-chan, you give yourself no credit. I have seen some of the dresses and clothes that you make—watched you make them right here in this stand, even. I know that you lost your kimono in a flood after your wedding, but you must remember some of it. I know you can make a beautiful wedding kimono for me. Please, Taya-chan? As a wedding gift for me?"

Taya sighed internally. 'Why is it that I've suddenly become so soft-hearted?' she mused as she turned to look over her shoulder at her currently brown-haired "husband." He felt her eyes on him and looked up and waved. Turning back to Yura, she said, "Okay Yura, I'll do my best to make a wedding kimono worthy of you." Yura nearly squealed in happiness. "But," Taya continued, "I want you to tell your mother that if she feels up to it I would very much like her help in designing it. She may not be able to sew it for you, but she can still help decide how it will look."

"Oh Taya-chan, you're such a wonderful friend. Of course I'll tell Okaa-san—she'll be so happy to help you!" Yura embraced her friend and Taya returned it. "Thank you so much, I can't wait to see it."

"You're welcome, of course, Yura. I couldn't tell you no anyway," Taya said happily. "When is the wedding though? How long until you need your dress?"

Yura beamed at Taya and said, "One month. We'll be married one month from today."

"I'd better get started today then," Taya said. 'Holy crap!,' she thought, 'I hope I can pull this off.'

Taya and Yura chatted for a few more moments before Yura bid her friend farewell.

III TKI III

Kyo watched Taya and Yura out of the corner of his eye as he worked. Yura was very excited about something and Taya seemed to be getting caught up in it too. 'Looks like Shiro finally got it together enough to set the wedding date,' he thought to himself with a grin. He set himself back to work on his current project, looking up occasionally to see Taya going through what appeared to be her entire stock of fabrics. Occasionally they needed to visit one of the larger villages in order to get more materials, and it may be that it was time for another such trip.

Taya had exhausted her stock of fabric in her cart and gone indoors, evidently not finding what she wanted or needed, and Kyo was about to finish up on his task when he looked up to see a friendly face approaching from the main road. He rose and doffed his apron before wiping his hands on a nearby rag to greet the man.

"Tanazuki-san! What a pleasant surprise to see you." Kyo greeted his fellow tradesman with genuine happiness. Tanazuki Toumaru was the metal worker from the neighboring village that had taken Kyo and Taya in for a time while they were looking for a place to settle. It had been his suggestion to move to their current home and he and his wife, Suzume, were a kindly middle-aged couple who treated them almost like son and daughter.

"Ohayo, Kyo-kun. It has been too long since we last saw you and Taya." The two men exchanged short bows before Kyo gestured for the older man to come into his shop. "Suzume-chan sends her blessings to both of you, of course, but she was not able to come with me today."

Kyo set about pouring saucers of tea for the both of them, as was customary in the region for nearly every occasion, being Tea Country. They silently completed the tea-drinking ritual before resuming their conversation.

"Tana-san, I am embarrassed that you have come to visit us. We are indebted to you and Suzume-san and we should have been to see you before now," Kyo said, genuinely embarrassed at the situation. Fortunately, the older man was not the type to worry about such things.

"Kyo-kun, I told you when you and Taya decided to come here that it would be a long and difficult thing to start your own shops. I expect that you have been too busy to be much concerned for an old man and woman in the next village. But your sentiments are appreciated." He paused to take a sip of tea, which Kyo mirrored. "The truth is," he continued, "that as much as I enjoy seeing you and Taya, I have come here on business. I have a favor to ask of you, Kyo-kun."

Kyo became very intent and leaned forward, eager to know how he could help his friend. The tone of his voice had been very serious and he wondered at the sense of urgency in the man's voice. He waited patiently as Tana shrugged off his small traveling bundle and retrieved a cloth bundle from it. He lifted it up to the small work table and unwrapped the cloth to reveal something that shocked Kyo.

Tana had revealed Kyo's own ninjato within the bundle.

Initially Kyo had the instinct to run inside and open his sealing scroll and make sure the blade was still where he had put it during the escape from Water Country. He had schooled his features pretty well, he had thought, and after a moment's reflection realized that it was impossible that what was lying on the table in front of him was not his own sword. Instead it was a perfect replica. The ninjato did not have many distinguishing features, which was truthfully its most distinguishing feature. Most blades had some decorative qualities to them, usually an artistic brand or stamp from the sword-maker to mark his work, or perhaps even a particularly designed tsuba or colored hand wrap for the owner's family or clan. This blade was completely blank of distinguishing traits. It held no human essence, as if it had been made by human hands, but was coldly and soullessly manufactured by a machine. The handle, wrap, and hand guard, which was nothing more than a square metal plate, were all a very flat black color. The blade had no stylization, simply a meticulously sharpened edge. He could see from the gradient of the steel surface as the edge cut through the cross-section that the tang extended nearly the full width of the blade. This was a tool for killing, and more than that it was a tool for silent, soulless, emotionless, cold-blooded assassination. And it was made exactly like his own, with no detectable variation save one: the blade was broken.

When Kyo finally tore his gaze away from the blade and looked back to Tana, the older man's face looked grave. "Tana-san, who brought you such a thing? And why? Why have you now brought it to me?"

Tana sighed. "I am sorry, Kyo-kun. You must forgive a nosy old man. The reason I have brought this to you will require some explanation. Yesterday a very odd man brought this to my shop and asked—rather insistently—that I repair it. I told him that I was not a swordsmith and that such work was out of my league. He offered me a large sum of money and asked again that I fix it. The second time, he did something and I thought for a moment that I had seen my own death at this man's hands. And worse than that, that he had killed my dear Suzume-chan alongside me." He paused and looked down to the ground beneath the table. Kyo's eyes hardened and narrowed. "I was so frightened that I agreed to take the job, even knowing that I would never be able to repair it, but also knowing that if I didn't this man would murder us without thinking twice. I was beside myself all of yesterday and last night I finally told Suzume-chan. Her worries increased my own anxiety and I did not sleep at all last night."

Tana sighed and wiped his now sweating forehead with a rag he had drawn from his pocket. Kyo could see that the ordeal had taken quite a toll on the man. "Tana-san, I'm so sorry—that is a terrible situation. But that still doesn't explain why you've brought it to me—I assume you wish for me to fix it in your stead?"

The aged metalworked nodded and sighed. "Yes, Kyo-kun. I have brought it to you in hopes that you will be able to repair this blade. My reason for doing so is also why I must apologize to both you and Taya-chan. While you were staying with us, I happened to see you as you were preparing for bed. As you changed into your evening clothes I noticed that you had numerous scars on back and chest. I have only seen scars like those on veterans of wars. They are very clearly sword wounds."

Kyo sat back, somewhat in shock. Tana waited, as if debating whether or not he should reveal something to Kyo. "Once, during the last great war between the ninja villages, I was living near the border of our country and Fire Country. A badly wounded Konoha ninja had escaped a battle and made his way to my village, and my family took him in. He had been injured numerous times and we were unable to save his life, but I have never forgotten what a sword wound looks like, Kyo-kun." Tana fixed Kyo with a level gaze. "My friend, I don't know what has happened in your past, but I know that you and Taya are probably running from something. I don't know whether you were a ninja, or a samurai, or a ronin, or even just someone who was unfortunate enough to anger someone of those three classes, but you were the only one I could think of who might be able to help me. Please," Tana bowed and placed his hands palms down on the table, "Please Kyo-kun, help me to make this man happy, that he might spare mine and Suzume's lives."

Kyo's gaze had returned to the blade by now. He truly had no knowledge of how to re-cast and forge a blade of such quality, but was genuinely curious as to how it had been broken in the first place. No doubt it, and its owner, had run afoul of someone of either stronger skill or with a stronger blade, or even both. He looked back to Tanazuki, still sitting in a submissive, begging posture. He didn't know whether or not he would be able to do as the customer asked, but he would try for his friend's sake. He reached out to his friend's hands, lifting them off the table and giving him a friendly grin as he lifted his head.

"My friend," Kyo said, "of course I will help you. I don't know whether I will succeed, but I will try my best for you. How long do you have before he returns for the sword?"

"One month," he said. "He told me he would return in one month's time from yesterday to retrieve his sword." Tana was now smiling tearfully at his young friend, touched by his willingness to help.

"Well," Kyo's grin widened, "I guess I'd better get to work then, huh?"

III TKI III

He wandered seemingly without aim across Fire Country, headed towards the border with Kusa on his way to the land of Earth for his next assignment. He had already sent his debrief from his last mission back to the Taichou, detailing all except the loss of his ninjato. He hoped that the old man in Tea Country would be able to repair it. Being a tool himself, and fully understanding that fact, he knew how seriously the loss or damage of one of his own ninja tools would be taken. Particularly his issued ninjato, which was made exactly to the Taichou's specifications, modeled on his own ANBU katana from his days on active duty.

No, Danzo-sama was not forgiving of his subordinates when they lost or broke their tools, and often it resulted in the negligent one's own damage or loss.

Even more troubling were the events that led to his sword being broken. The ANBU team had caught him completely by surprise following the successful completion of his last assignment. It troubled him because ROOT operatives were always notified of Konoha ANBU teams operating near an objective, but no mention had been made of the team he encountered. It was dangerous for a mere tool like him to make suppositions regarding anything outside of his mission, but it seemed to him that there were only two explanations for the unanticipated ANBU encounter: either they had also been after his target, or they had been after him. Both were equally troubling, as the Taichou's sources within ANBU had never failed in such a way before, as far as he knew.

He derailed his train of thought as he continued his silent journey towards his next target. It was not becoming of a tool to think too much.


End file.
